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ST. QUIN 



" St. Quin 


By 

Dion Clayton Calthrop 

Author of “Perpetua Mary,** 

“The Harlequin Set/’ etc. 


New York 
John Lane Company 
MCMXIII 



Copyright 1912, 1913, by 
JOHN LANE COMPANY 
New York 


To My Wife 

Mary Violet Clayton Calthrop 


To- Cross 
! 9 12 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

L 

Artificial Respiration 




PAGE 

I 

II. 

The Elfin Spirit 




IO 

III. 

To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 




19 

IV. 

The Enchanted Parent . 




30 

V. 

A Very Old World . 




42 

VI. 

Conversation with a Lunatic 




52 

VII. 

Marginal Notes 




61 

VIII. 

The Fairy in the Cobweb . 




76 

IX. 

Fetter Lane 




89 

X. 

Paradise Alley 




107 

XI. 

Love-scenes a la Mode 




116 

XII. 

Felicity .... 




125 

XIII. 

A Comedy of Manners 




133 

XIV. 

So He Began to Prowl 




143 

XV. 

The House 




152 

XVI. 

Servants to a Ghost 




161 

XVII. 

An Angel among the Critics 




180 

XVIII. 

A September Spirit . 




189 

XIX. 

Cross-questions and Crooked Answers 


205 


vii 


Contents 


viii 

CHAPTER 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

. XXV. 
XXVI. 


A Childless Christmas 
Havoc among the Innocents 
The Tell-tale Window 
Form at a Glance 
The Armour of Breeding . 

The Amateur Doctor 

The Confounding of Mr. Bridgewater 


PAGE 

222 

230 

242 

251 

260 

275 

284 


ST. QUIN 


CHAPTER I 

ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION 

Every breath that Edmond St. Quin drew was 
full of germs. In the first place when the nurse 
placed him in the cradle she crooned as she had 
crooned over his father in the same hapless 
plight. And the cradle had been his great- 
grandfather’s. 

At his christening the family fairies were 
present peeping from behind the skirts and 
trousers of the numerous St. Quins round the 
font. And they bestowed the St. Quin gifts: 
dark hair, rather curly; very deep brown eyes, set 
wide apart; a long, lean, wiry body; quiet and 
charming manners; and something else. Every 
St. Quin had a twist of character which he 
tried, fairly successfully, to obliterate. But at 
every christening some stray fairy — possibly for- 
gotten by the verger, or waiting behind after 
some other like ceremony, or purely out of mis- 
chief — presented your St. Quin with a gift, and 
I 


2 


St. Quin 


this odd and entirely unexpected gift was the 
cause of many anxious family gatherings. 

There had been, for instance, that better- 
forgotten creature, Otho St. Quin, who died, 
Heaven knows where, after a life of famous 
dissipation. His portrait, in wig and ruffles, was 
in the gallery, and gave no hint of his history. 
Edmond was thought like him by a romantic 
second cousin, but she kept her feelings secret. 
Anyhow, she was wrong. 

And again, the less said the better of Barbara 
St. Quin, whose portrait, by Lely, is on the right 
of the gallery just by the door of the library. 
From her sprang those dreadful persons, the 
Valences, ignored by the family, and a very sore 
point with them by reason of their diabolical 
success. In what? In trade. — Impossible. 

A glance at the catalogue of the gallery 
would teach you nothing, but some stupid — ac- 
cording to the family — but amazingly clever — 
according to the world — person, Charles St. 
Quin, must needs write a brilliant history of the 
family and expose all its little stories and scan- 
dals to the great joy of curiously minded people 
and the glory of the literary world. 

What twist had Edmond? It appeared that 
he might not have one. His father and his 
uncles were gentlemen of perfectly regular lives, 
one might almost say clockwork lives. The 
uncle in Parliament, on the right side, and a 


Artificial Respiration 3 

Cabinet Minister at that, and more, he had 
never been accused of giving birth to one 
original idea. Another uncle, Wilfred, a Master 
of Foxhounds, a profession in itself. Another, 
Admiral St. Quin, Slim Jim to sailors, James 
to his wife, and a nonentity at that. And Ed- 
mond’s father, the eldest, who owned the house 
and estate; a big, quiet man, very simple in his 
tastes, a little mysterious perhaps — perhaps not, 
it depends upon how you look at mystery. At 
all events, on the surface most normal. 

And Edmond’s mother, Clarissa Jordan that 
was? A romantic name, one might admit, but 
did any trace of romance appear in her? Not 
one bit. Not that any of her friends could see. 
Mildred Harkness who had been at school with 
her had stories, yes, but mere schoolgirl affairs. 
Perhaps a preference for some actor of the day, 
or a young passion for a neighbor’s son. If 
it were true, a year in Germany cured that. 
Did it, one wonders? If one were suspicious, 
the very serenity of the St. Quins’ lives might 
be suspicious. They seemed admirably suited 
but never intimate. 

Edmond grew. He breathed in the atmos- 
phere of his fathers before him, of the big hall, 
the long gallery, the armour, the library smell- 
ing of good bindings, of the avenue his great- 
great-grandfather planted. That very gentleman 
had possessed a passion for trees, had even 


St. Quin 


4 

written an extraordinary book, half diary of 
actual events, half meditations, and all on the 
planting of trees. A good deal of it was very 
beautiful, rather high flown perhaps, but filled 
with the poetry of Nature. The book was in 
the library. Edmond read it, and thought it 
rot. 

Everything in the house was smooth, orderly 
and punctual. At an early age Edmond rose at 
half-past six, and, accompanied by a groom, 
rode an exceedingly fat pony over very good 
grass, and fell several times, and did not cry. 
At a later age he rode alone or with his sister 
Barbara, and they did their best to break their 
necks, but as the St. Quins were almost born on 
horseback nothing happened. Once, when he 
was out alone, being then ten years of age, he 
was pressed to accept a glass of small ale by a 
farmer. He drank it, rode home in a dazed 
condition, announced the fact that something 
had gone funny in his head, and retired to bed. 
It was considered that he had done quite the 
right thing. 

“ There’s the makings of a man in that boy,” 
said his father, and was thought to have said a 
remarkably wise thing. 

Before breakfast there was a peculiar cere- 
mony known as prayers, read by St. Quin to the 
accompaniment of a kettle on the boil. You 
knelt with your face to the wall if you were a 


Artificial Respiration 5 

servant, to the windows if you were of the family 
or a guest. Once the cat jumped upon the 
breakfast-table while St. Quin was reading the 
psalm that always finished prayers. Without 
stopping, he caught the cat, took it to the door, 
and shooed it out. Edmond could see by the re- 
flection in the windows a slight agitation among 
one or two of the print dresses. 

Mrs. St. Quin did not appear at prayers, it 
being understood that she was inclined to be 
High Church. And if the presence of a fald- 
stool in her bedroom and two books of devotions 
on it were a sign of High Church she certainly 
was. It was, however, bad form to mention 
religion. One went to church as an example 
to the tenants. 

Edmond had a tutor from whom he imbibed 
what is known in that circle as Education. 
After the ordinary efforts to learn reading and 
writing and a vague hazard at the deep and 
wonderful mysteries of mathematics, he passed 
on to that supreme knowledge that the Crocodile 
laid eggs — in Greek; and that Balbus was build- 
ing a wall — in Latin. In French he mastered 
“ The penholder of the gardener’s sister,” and 
such illuminating sentences. And in English 
history he struggled with a confusion of dates, 
names, laws and divorce cases, coming out of 
the sea of facts uncertain of the number of 
Henry the Eighth’s wives, of the meaning of 


6 


St. Quin 


Magna Charta, of the real reason for Oliver 
Cromwell’s rebellion. But he was firm in the 
story of Alfred and the cakes; the discovery of 
Richard Coeur de Lion by a minstrel (name 
forgotten) ; that some Queen had sucked poison 
from her husband’s wound; the death of the 
young Princes in the Tower (names and reasons 
also forgotten) ; was very keen on Sir Walter 
Raleigh and Drake; was angry about the death 
of Charles the First — and after that came a mere 
podge of stories vaguely connected with a period 
called the Eighteenth Century, until history grew 
clear again at the Battle of Waterloo. 

With these things firmly in his mind he went 
to school. The St. Quins went to Eton. 

Yet there was that gift at his christening. 
He took a pleasure in dreaming, very faint but 
yet a pleasure. There was something in him, 
he knew, beyond the fact that he was a St. 
Quin and would be very rich. There was some- 
thing in the world besides the quietude of the 
big Elizabethan house and the sanctuary of the 
ages-old garden. 

Once Barbara, his sister, gave him one of 
her books. It was called Grimm’ s Fairy Tales. 
It was, had he known it, the key to the first 
door leading on to another world. 

“ Well, if you want a book,” said Barbara, 
“ here’s this.” 

“What’s it called?” 


Artificial Respiration 7 

She told him the title. 

“ Sounds awful rot,” said he. 

“Well, if you don’t like it you needn’t have 
it.” 

“ Chuck it down,” he answered. 

She, from the play-room window, threw the 
magic book to him as he stood on the terrace 
below and called out, “ Swear you won’t mess 
it, Teddy.” 

“ All right. I swear,” said he. 

One is almost inclined to believe that the first 
dose of poison lay between those covers. Ed- 
mond took the book, and a dog, and a piece of 
cake, and four apples down to the punt. He 
poled down stream about a quarter of a mile to 
a pool shaded by willows, lay down in the 
bottom of the punt, and ate and read. His 
verdict was delivered at tea, a meal he and his 
sister often had alone in the play-room. 

“ Dash it, Babs, it’s a girl’s book.” 

To which she answered, “ Your mouth’s 
covered with jam.” 

“ Well, it is a girl’s book,” said he. 

“ Boys don’t know everything,” said Babs. 

“ They know a jolly sight more than most 
girls,” said Teddy. 

There was a slight pause in the argument, 
during which they were very polite about pass- 
ing the cake. She broke the silence by 
saying : 


8 


St. Quin 


“ Teddy, if you’ll keep a secret, I’ll show 
you where they live.” 

“ Who’s they?” 

“ Fairies.” 

“ Rot.” 

“ It isn’t rot,” she answered hotly. “ It’s 
most frightfully jolly to believe in them.” 

“ I’m going to row next term,” he answered, 
feeling a little out of his depth. 

“ And we’ll ask if we can take our lunch out 
to a place I know to-morrow,” said Babs. “ I 
think you might be bucked, it’s a stunning 
place down the river. Do come.” 

“ I’ll punt you down. You’re rotten with the 
pole,” he answered graciously. 

So they went. And no one knows what effect 
it had on his life. 

It was a little cup in the woods, all bracken 
and primroses and young trees. And the sky 
was laced across with tender green leaves and 
slim budding branches. And a rippling little 
stream ran over bright stones and dashed for 
fun round moss-covered rocks. And just a little 
way off the river ran, hidden by trees, and sang 
the song rivers do sing in spring. 

They tied up the punt, and opened the 
lunch-basket, and chattered while they ate, 
then fell silent while she, wise woman of 
eleven years, waited for the prompting of his 
curiosity. 


Artificial Respiration 9 

“ Not a bad place,” he admitted, man of 
twelve. 

She, flat on her back with her hat over her 
eyes, said, very soft: 

“ It’s most awfully secret.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean about these 
fairies,” he said. “ Plenty of rabbit holes.” 

“ Oh, you boy,” came from under the hat. 

“ That’s all jolly well,” said Teddy, “ but 
that’s all I see. And I jolly well only believe 
in the things I can see.” 

Then she began. She told him how they 
came out at night and drank out of acorn cups, 
and Teddy forgot to mention there weren’t any 
oaks about. Ahd she told him how they danced, 
and how they sat under toadstools, and swang 
on the fronds of bracken, and how, if they kept 
awfully quiet, they might see one. 

So they kept quiet until Teddy saw something 
moving among the fern, and he leapt up with 
a shout and said: “ There’s one!” And a rabbit, 
crazy with fear, bolted for his life. 

“Oh,” cried Barbara, “ it’s turned itself into 
a rabbit because you shouted.” 

He laughed contemptuously at her. “ You 
silly ass, Babs. I bet there aren’t any .such 
things.” 

He denied them. He denied the elfin spirit 
in life. He denied the dreamy, dew-wet nights 
in woods and the moon’s magic spell. And 


IO 


St. Quin 


the high games of Oberon and Ariel and Puck. 
All that lies beyond fact he denied. 

And yet one day he was very late for dinner, 
almost a criminal offence. He had been all day 
alone in that cup in the woods looking for 
something it took him twelve years to find. 


CHAPTER II 
THE ELFIN SPIRIT 

So Teddy St. Quin denied the elfin spirit. He 
denied all that makes life a wonder, a dream, 
a romance, a great tapestry spun with the golden 
thread of imagination. He cut Columbine and 
Harlequin out of the Great Harlequinade, and 
took to himself the rough-and-tumble of Clown, 
the rigidity of the Policeman, and the “ what 
was good enough for my father is good enough 
for you,” of Pantaloon. 

But Columbine and Harlequin will not be 
denied. A thousand times a year Harlequin 
taps with his magic wand and sends the stock- 
broker rejoicing on his way to the business 
train, seeing what was not there before. The 
swaying tassels of laburnum in his neigh- 
bour’s garden — the golden purses of the poor 
in pocket and the rich in spirit; the faint, de- 
licious odour ' of lilac; the voices of children 
playing; the sudden bursting, overwhelming 
love-song of a thrush. And there creeps, from 
this, an elfin spirit into his day’s work, and 
money becomes a symbol, a token with which 


II 


12 


St. Quin 


to pay for dreams, and the hearth becomes an 
altar, and the home a palace, and the train bear- 
ing him onwards a ship full of elderly children. 
And Columbine puts a flower in his buttonhole. 
And his clerks, looking up from their ink- 
stained desks, see far away — yet not so far — 
magic casements that look on fairy seas forlorn. 

He who walks on grass, understanding grass, 
is a happy man. The soft tread under foot, 
the eyes of daisies, the clean scent, the cloak of 
good green rest tired eyes. 

But he who treads pavements weaving dreams 
is a king and a happy king, and owns at least 
one world, and that all his own. For him trees 
and flowers speak, and houses unfold their his- 
tories, and postmen have wings and carry in 
their bags the scythe of Time and the darts of 
Cupid. And what smile they give policemen at 
crowded crossings is repaid an hundredfold, and 
what smile they give to children, yes, and to 
nurses, is repaid a thousandfold. 

Yet our stubborn manner of education en- 
forces on young men that he who has a fringe of 
soul about his person has, probably, a fringe of 
soil about his cuffs. That to appear moved is 
to appear mawkish. That admittedly to care for 
simple joys is to own oneself out of the move- 
ment of the world. So do we make slaves of 
emperors, and hard beds out of pillows of roses, 
if we deny the elfin spirit. 


The Elfin Spirit 13 

To what purpose all this? To show Teddy 
at school, an animal as fond of buns as bears, a 
clean, fine-limbed, sound-winded, utterly ordinary 
boy. He was one of a number of clean collars, 
white flannels, beads of short hair, fresh com- 
plexions, white waistcoats, and strong shoes. You 
may pick them out of a box and not know the 
difference. Only mothers know the difference be- 
tween boys, so careful is our system of training. 
And only boys resent this. To be exceptional 
is to be marked out. As soon, they say, wear 
brown boots with dress-clothes. As soon go to 
the wrong shop for ties, or be ignorant of the 
names of the giants of the cricket field. 

But the mothers, among themselves, knowing 
every scar, every hair, every tooth of the young 
gentlemen, go over their dreams carefully, 
searching in bottom drawers for queer little shoes, 
once worn, and nurse grudges against those 
young gentlemen whose chest measurements wax 
greater than their own darlings’. And, in strict 
confidence, one with another, burst into paeans 
of praise on the works of their own production, 
seeing in them generals, admirals, judges, and 
bishops in the making. 

And the sisters see the faults and love them, 
and are curious of other boys’ sisters, and on the 
great days, when the brothers condescend to in- 
troduce them to their friends, swell and grow big 
with pride, , and diminish and grow small with 


St. Quia 


shame, to see their brothers in the thrall of mere 
insignificant, empty-headed creatures, by name 
Miss Thompson, or such-like, with lisle thread 
stockings, and cotton frocks, and an inexpensive 
pearl ornament on a thin gold chain about their 
' necks. 

They know that the reason of the elaborate 
tea is Miss Thompson and not themselves. They 
know that the burnished hair and the rather tight 
shoes, and the very strained conversation are by 
reason of Miss Thompson’s blinding presence. 
They see the commencement of the downfall of 
man and the sceptre of the woman’s little finger 
about which the world of men writhes, and they 
resent it bitterly until — until — young Thompson 
himself presses them to a ridiculous amount of 
cake, giving them the bits with the almond in 
them, or feigns great interest in girls’ hockey, and 
his eyes wander furtively to their hair, so that 
a sudden and awkward flush makes Miss St. Quin 
hot to her very eyes (modestly downcast), and 
her photographs of favourite actors pale into in- 
significance beside this “ 72 not out, and on a rot- 
ten wicket,” “ Oh, shut up ! ” from the blushing 
Thompson. And all this, if you please, with the 
shadow of the cradle only just behind them. One 
wishes, to Heaven, that the shadow of the cradle 
might always be there. 

Innocence has a curiously attractive smell. It 
has, a very mingled affair, the scent of nurseries, 


i5 


The Elfin Spirit 

the smell of when you used to say your prayers 
by the side of a tumbled bed, of soap, of cold 
water, of the reedy banks of rivers where you 
fished for minnows, hoping to bring some home 
in a jam-pot full of water, of clean starched 
linen, of the first gooseberry tart, of wind off the 
sea, and of the bodies of young children. 

Something of this clings through life from 
schooldays: a whiff here and there, perhaps of a 
new cricket ball, or from perspiring and muddy 
heroes playing football, or in passing an open 
church door in Paris, and you are back in the 
time when the only wrong you did was the legiti- 
mate getting the better of your pastors and 
masters. 

Through all this Teddy passed in the armour 
of gorgeous indifference. The flare of history — 
Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra, Madame Pom- 
padour, Joan of Arc, Venus, Catherine of Russia, 
just so many names to him. Warlike heroes he 
took to his heart but not the dates of their exist- 
ences. Elizabeth of England reviewed troops, 
good enough. A ripper, and noted as such. 
Sarah Jennings, the great Duchess of Marl- 
borough, top hole, as rude as any camp follower. 
Anne Boleyn, rather decent, according to the illus- 
trations. Classic heroines all vague, unsatisfac- 
tory figures parading through a dead language in 
improper clothes — dull. The world of women, 
taking them all round, good enough at socks, fix- 


i6 


St. Quin 


ing things up with the Governor, fussing about 
if one had a cold. But the world of men — ah! 
To be six foot, or over. To be big in the biceps, 
to earn praise — “ Not bad, you young ass,’ ? from 
one’s coach on the river; to be swift of foot, 
sharp of tongue, quick of eye, fit, smart with 
the left fist in a fight, and good in the wind in 
a paper chase, that was life as lived on the edu- 
cational Olympus among educated Olympians. 

If Teddy and his kind learned nothing else 
they learned to be men, to go straight, to have 
clean hands and a clean tongue, to look after 
their bodies, and to prepare themselves against 
the great fight with the gift of a superlative 
honesty. 

Yet there came that twist, that extra eye of the 
St. Quins. He would find himself speculating, 
almost with a shudder, about the immensity of 
the stars, and the thought, carelessly imbibed one 
day, of the distance of the sun from the earth 
gave him a mental pain almost too strong to bear. 
But, beyond that, he found himself observing 
colours, and the shapes of people’s heads, and 
once was brought to an abrupt terminus of his 
mental outlook by the swing of some verses, a 
task put upon him by a new master not yet dulled 
by routine. 

At home, during this time, the exactitude of the 
domestic arrangements rather tied him. He be- 
gan then a habit that for ever remained with 


The Elfin Spirit 17 

him, that earned him his nickname at Oxford; he 
prowled, and was known as The Prowler. There 
are many words in the language representing 
shades of this phase of unrest. To saunter, sup- 
posed to be derived from those who love the 
earth and wander on Saint Terre. To mooch 
about, a listless business; to wander, showing an 
over-eager spirit, high pulsed and loose ended; to 
stroll, more the province of the philosopher; to 
loaf, the work of an idler; to prowl, quite the 
spirit of the adventurer, one who seeks, one who 
is eager for new sensations, one who hopes to 
find a heroine in every cottage, one who possesses, 
perhaps unwittingly, the gift of the elfin spirit. 

It led Teddy — by way of excuse he said he 
wanted to know the estate — into abrupt collisions 
with farmers’ boys, whose thatched heads he 
punched, or by whose horny hands he received 
punishment. It gave him curious knowledge of 
the habits of wild animals, and so appeased his 
inherited sporting instincts. It gave him glimpses 
of Nature at her secret business. The tumble of 
water over weirs, the lace-like foam, the irides- 
cent bubbles, the dart and sudden gleam of king- 
fishers. It gave him a power of silence given by 
deep woods where pine-needles carpet the rides, 
or beech-nuts only crack underfoot, or by stretches 
of heath and moor whose rims showed dark 
against the sky, as if no world lay beyond that 
immensity but stars and the breath of some great 


i8 


St. Quin 


unknown Being. Or the black and silver of a 
still pool; or the hush before storms, and the 
shiver of Nature before thunder, that grim voice 
speaking out of the sky; or the absolute com- 
manding beauty of a rainbow, the bridge between 
this world and a world of rare delights. 

So he grew, and so his sister grew. And there 
remained between them that best and most un- 
selfish of the affections, the only one where sex 
has no part and passion does not muddy the un- 
derstanding. Albeit that great love burns its way 
through from red fire to a molten glow of gold, 
it had, of course, touched neither of them yet. 
But Cupid can brush with his wings as well as 
wound with his darts, and of such is the love of 
brother and sister, unspoken, holy, and complete. 

If she had a St. Quin gift she hid it. His little 
oddness was clear to her woman’s eyes, but she 
never spoke of it. And her gift was the harder 
to bear for it was red, red blood, a quick pulse 
and thoughts of splendid unknown things to cul- 
minate — vaguely — in a Norse-like giant of a man, 
one day, on another with a fiery Southerner, on 
another with a kind of super-Catholic priest as 
sacred as vestments and incense could make him 
outside, but a man all aglow within. 

So Barbara bowled to Teddy overhand, and 
very well, or played tennis with him, or threw a 
fly by his side after his instructions, climbed 


The Elfin Spirit 19 

many trees — out of sight of the house — and re- 
garded him secretly as a man above men. 

Of his father he knew nothing, except that he 
was the model of all country gentlemen, by whom 
he was treated almost as an equal in all unim- 
portant matters, as a complete stranger in all 
those affairs where the realities of life come 
uppermost. 

As for Mrs. St. Quin and himself their rela- 
tions were on the basis of a complete and satis- 
factory understanding. She knew, the names of 
all his friends, their habits, failings, and prowess 
on fields of sports. They spoke together, not 
quite freely, on the outward observances of re- 
ligion as if it were a society function, or the 
rules of a club, the founder of which paid almost 
exclusive attention to those English mentioned in 
Burke’s Landed Gentry. Points of honour with 
regard to the treatment of certain young ladies, 
as to how one wrote to them — if one did; good 
form before the servants; woman’s advice as to 
how to arm oneself against other women — a 
feeble advice at that and certainly traitorous to 
the sex; the flimsiest career at the University — 
such were the grounds on which Teddy based his 
love for his mother, whom he regarded as a 
sweet, dear, precious woman whose intellect was 
far below the average man’s. In fact, he imag- 
ined that he took care of her. And no line in 


20 


St. Quin 


her face told him that she had conquered that 
gift Barbara had of red, red blood, or that her 
almost nunlike aloofness was the ice over an 
aching heart. 

And so he went to Oxford. 


CHAPTER III 

TO PHYLLIS, NOT TO BE UNKIND 

To Gerald Sunderland, most amiable of good 
fellows, and esteemed most correct of mortals, 
Teddy explained how the whole world hung in 
the balance. 

“ You see, old chap,” he said, pointing each 
remark with a tennis racquet, “ you see, it isn’t 
as if I was awfully hard up, or a rotter, or hadn’t 
done anything.” 

“ Exactly,” replied the oracle. 

“And she’s . You don’t mind me telling 

you all this?” 

“ Enjoy it,” answered the sage. 

“ She’s such a little stunner.” 

At which there fell a silence, as if a listening 
world , leaned to give an ear to the portentous 
conversation. The two young men, brave in 
white flannels, sun-browned, clip-headed, lay 
sprawling on the grass. Ice melted calmly in a 
cider-cup near by; the pale perfumed smoke of 
most expensive cigarettes curled to the sky. 
Through trees and flowers the great house 
showed, and in the garden the English orchestra 


21 


22 


St. Quin 


of humming insects played, while in the distance, 
most refreshing sound, a sprinkler played on Mrs. 
St. Quin’s most precious rose trees. 

“ And so?” said Gerry, filling his second 
glass. 

“ And so the trouble is that while it seems all 
right it feels all wrong.” 

No sound but cider slaking Gerry’s throat. 

“ Being in the boat doesn’t seem to count, and 
having pots of money doesn’t, either.” 

The excellent Gerald roused himself. “ You 
might remember, Teddy,” he said, “that you’re 
a bit scrappy in your information. I know who 
you mean, of course — Miss Pinner — and I know 
you’ve been at her people’s and she’s been here, 
but the — the cream of the thing I know nothing 
about. Are you ?” 

“ Well, that’s just it,” said Teddy. “ Am I 
fond of her? Often when I am shaving I say 
to myself, 4 Do I ?’ — and I don’t know. Look 
at this beastly cut, that comes of looking at her 
photograph instead of the glass. Of course I’m 
awfully keen on her. Well, I chucked cigarettes 
for ten days when I wasn’t in training. And 
when I came down this morning — what did she 
say — I ask you?” 

“ I heard her, old chap.” 

“Well — there you are. Is that a sign? ‘We 
do love our new socks, don’t we?’ — you heard 
her say it, Gerry.” 


23 


To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 

“ You don’t seem to have changed them.” 

“ Well, old chap, a man can’t give up every- 
thing.” 

“ She might have been pulling your leg.” 

Teddy raised himself on one elbow and looked 
seriously at his friend. 

“ Do you know,” he said, “ I’m not sure she’s 
not always doing it. Look here. I met her at 
our ball, and then at the hop at Oriel, and then 
there was that picnic, you know: you and my 
sister, and Tubby and Doris Cooper, and Phyllis 
and me. We wandered about, if you remember, 
and I showed her the place where I broke the 
punt pole and got soused, and all that. Well, I 
met her again by appointment, and we swopped 
ideas and got on like billy-o. Then her brother 
asked me down, and I went. Then she let me 
call her Phyllis — which was rather jolly of her. 
And I found out her pater knew mine donkey 
years ago, so we all palled up.” 

“ Sort of brotherly love.” 

“ Well, you know, old chap,” said Teddy, “ as 
well as I do, that if you go about on the river 
with a girl, and her step suits yours and all that, 
things become, if you know what I mean, dif- 
ferent. I got a bit off my feed and thought an 
awful lot about her. She’s got jolly hair, you 
know, and awfully jolly eyes, and altogether I 
got rather keen.” 

“And she?” asked the wise adviser. 


24 


St. Quin 


44 Well, that’s the whole thing. I must tell 
somebody or I shall burst. She, really, admires 
quite a different sort of chap. I mean, my getting 
into the boat didn’t seem to matter at all. She’s 
awfully keen on a chap reading and getting on 
and making a name. Well, as I said, 4 It’s no 
good my getting on, because I’ve got to run the 
place some time, and that’ll take all my time.’ 
So she lent me a book, most awful tosh, I thought 
— but I read it. And when she asked me for my 
honest opinion I said — well, I said, 4 I don’t un- 
derstand a word of it,’ and she said, 4 Poor old 
Teddy Bear! ’” 

“ Unromantic ” 

“ Beastly awkward. Especially as I found 
she’d written in it — 4 To him who understands.’ 
Girls are damn rum, aren’t they?” 

44 Not if you understand them,” replied Gerry. 

44 It was poetry, you know — Browning. Top 
hole, I’m told, but I’m not a brainy bird. Any- 
how, I followed it up. I bought a Tennyson, 
and I felt like a fool doing it. The silly ass 
said, 4 The complete works?’ and of course I 
downed him. I said, 4 The best selection ’ — 
rather cute. And I got it bound in green soft 
stuff, and then I got my sister’s copy out of her 
room and marked all the things she’d marked, 
and posted it off.” 

44 Brilliant,” said Gerry. 

44 So I thought. But it turned out that she’d 


To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 25 

borrowed my sister’s copy — you know the way 
girls do things, and spotted the markings — so of 
course I had to own up.” 

“ Good Lord,” said Gerry; “ what did she 
say?” 

“Well, she was very decent about it, but my 
sister simply yelled. It turned out that my sister 
knew I was rather keen and they used to discuss 
it. So I felt rather a fool.” 

Gerald Sunderland sat up and clasped his 
knees. His expressionless face, aided by an eye- 
glass, gazed towards the pitcher of cider-cup. He 
had the reputation, being twenty-three and rather 
silent, of profound knowledge of the world, and 
he enjoyed his eminent position. On him had 
descended England’s most cherished mantle. He 
was her last completed product, her ultimate fling. 
He was of Eton, of Christchurch, born of noble 
parents, wooden as the oaks of their celebrated 
avenue, and kind as the dogs in their kennels. 
He had a perfect poise, an absolute belief in him- 
self and his class, was just and generous and 
truthful. Fished, hunted, steeplechased, played 
cricket, and danced like a perfect automaton. And 
inside the wood of his exterior he was as gentle 
and simple, and shy and religious (though he 
didn’t know it), and as fond of his country as 
people born of quite humble parentage. But sys- 
tems and institutions, and barricades and centu- 
ries of overbreeding had robbed him of speech. 


26 


St. Quin 


He was soul-dumb, soul-blind, but not soul-dead. 
Yet what a poetry was in him. He knew his 
country, and knew more of it than the canting 
Socialist who sought to dispossess him and his 
kind. When he came into his own each man be- 
neath him would have his due and a kind justice, 
and help when he was sick, and succour when he 
was poor. In him was the spirit of the trees his 
ancestors had planted, and the bricks they built 
with, and the courage they fought with, and the 
silent hearts they loved with. And he knew his 
dogs and horses, and each and every field and 
tree and farm, and hill and copse and cottage 
thirty square miles round him. Yet they who 
brought him up taught him nothing but to be a 
gentleman — and that he was already. 

And now he and the other boy discussed, as it 
were in terms of sport in their barren language, 
the finest, most delicate thread of the senses that 
the world knows. That first treading on the sex 
fringe out of which life makes life, from which 
nations spring, by which homes are made. The 
feeling of ‘man groping in the dark for woman, 
the exquisite flower that first grows on the new 
turned soil of love’s garden. 

Teddy and this girl putting out delicate, shy 
feelers toward the great sun of love were like all 
the world’s great lovers, like all great heroes and 
heroines. The touch of a hand shook them and 
their new-found senses to the very core, the very 


27 


To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 

marrow of their natures. Her slight palpitat- 
ing bosom was to him a marvel and a dream. 
His strong knit frame seemed of the young gods 
to her eyes. Yet neither of them knew what it 
was that moved them, or guessed that what they 
played at was the world’s greatest force; that a 
kiss had destroyed kingdoms, or a glance built 
them up; that the frailty of women had undone 
great enterprises, or the power of women had 
built cities, caused revolutions, changed the 
world’s map, shaken citadels, faiths, empires, 
arts, laws, and dynasties. 

They talked as if the gooseberry wine, as their 
love was, was of such vintage as was never 
known. She spilled passionate verses over sheets 
of secret note books, little knowing what mes- 
sages were theirs. He stepped fearlessly up to 
the very doors of her most secret chamber, and 
never saw the doors or knew of the room within. 
What did it hold, the inner room of Phyllis’s 
heart? Dim, perplexing, yet soothing thoughts 
of a god. The wrapping tenderness of her 
mother. Vague, disturbing visions, not compelled 
as yet to concrete thoughts of what might hap- 
pen. People have children. People droop and 
flame with love. People die. And between these 
few sensations and the world were the doors built 
of the habit of self-protection, of fear, of the 
usages of society, of an innate goodness, and of 
a reserve fostered by education. And all the 


28 


St. Quin 


while the heart would be peeping through the 
keyhole to see who was coming to melt the bar- 
riers, break down the doors with one look, a 
word, the gentlest pressure of a hand. 

So Gerald said, “ As you’ve told me so much, 
old chap, you’d better tell me the rest.” 

Then Teddy sat up, too. “ Phyllis came here, 
you know, and I had to own up to Babs, my sis- 
ter, you know. And she arranged a long day for 
us with her, and very decently lost us after lunch. 
And then I simply told her.” 

“ You proposed to her?” said the startled sage. 

“ I don’t know, and that’s the beastly nuisance 
of it. I walked along, you know, by her, and she 
did nothing but laugh, and at last I said, ‘ Look 
here, Phyllis,’ I said, ‘ I must talk to you.’ And 
she said, 4 Well, it’s up to you,’ So I said — 
well, I said I was very keen, and getting on, and 
twenty-one in a month, and feeling I ought to do 
something. And I s^id, ‘ We seem to get on 
awfully well together.’ Then she sat down by a 
jolly pool there was, and she thought a lot, and 
looked about at the sky and things, and I took 
her hand, feeling an awful ass. And she let me. 
And after a while, my hand being very hot and 
sticky and hers very cool and — and awfully jolly 
to hold, she simply talked her head off at me. 
She said there was a lot in me I never showed, 
and she understood me most awfully well, and 
thought I was really jam full of brains, and might 


29 


To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 

do such splendid things. So I said, 4 What ?’ 
And she said — (you’re sure I’m not boring you, 
old fellow,?) — she said, 4 I don’t know. Life’s so 
full of splendid things men can do. It’s girls 
who have to sit about, and dress up, and mince.’ 
She’s seventeen, you know, and she’s read a tre- 
mendous lot of stuff. And she jawed away about 
not liking merely athletic chaps, which was rather 
a blow in the eye for me. And she got a bit 
vague and quoted some poetry and a bit of Steven- 
son, and altogether got rather mixed. So then 
I owned up to being — well, rather in love with 
her. Then she got up, and I’m dashed if I know 
what I said. It’s rather difficult to explain. You 
see, there was me and there was Phyllis, and 
everything round seemed to fit in, sun shining 
through the leaves, and the old pool looking 
splendid, and it was awfully still and quiet, and 
something went bust inside me and I — I simply 
said all sorts of things.” 

44 I understand,” said Gerald. 44 I know the 
feeling quite well. We once had an extraordi- 
narily pretty housemaid — but it’s all over now.” 

But Teddy was full of his own affairs. He had 
sung as birds sing out of joy, from the fountain of 
his youth, as any male might sing to any female 
in the woods on a summer’s day. 

44 She was awfully quiet afterwards,” he said. 
44 And we walked home, and she limped a bit, and 
I found out it was a blister. And she said she’d 


St. Quin 


30 

give me her answer to-day — so I suppose I did 
propose. And you know, old chap, when I think 
of being married I fairly squirm.” 

There came to them across the grass a dainty 
figure — Phyllis. No hat hid the soft, luxuriant 
hair, brown as beechwoods in autumn. Her step 
as light as dancing thistledown, her head down- 
cast, her face pink, her figure unformed, slim, 
almost boyish. 

Gerald rose at once to go, made an excuse, 
and left them. 

The daisies in the grass held their breaths, 
not a cloud moved, roses nudged one another, 
trees were all still, birds looked with kindly eyes 
as Phyllis made confession. 

“ Pm a beast,” she said, humiliated. “ Of 
course I like you most awfully. But you see ” 

“ There’s another chap,” Teddy ventured. 

She hung her head, drooping like a lily. “ Can 
you forgive me?” 

And to him came quickly that odd fantastic 
twist of his. Harlequin tapped with his wand. 
Columbine whispered. And, like a flash, he saw 
the humour of it all, and knew (thanks, Colum- 
bine) he must say so. 

“So you were simply flirting with me?” he 
said. 

“ I didn’t mean to,” came, almost tearfully, the 
answer. 

Lambs, kittens, puppies, children, oh ! you 


To Phyllis, not to be Unkind 31 

young delicious girls! Flirt while the sun shines 
on you, and the world sings, and skies are always 
blue. Arch-deceivers to those who adore to be 
arch-deceived. Angels spiced with the Devil, and 
Spring, and Youth. Women in the bud, delight- 
ful flowers to be. “ I didn’t mean to.” Splendid! 


CHAPTER IV 


THE ENCHANTED PARENT 

Nearly everyone, I should imagine, knows the 
feeling which I should call The Study Door. 

It is an inviolate and sacred principle in very 
many families that the male parent must not, at 
certain times, be disturbed. Disturbed, pray, 
from what? 

From the days when the nurse reigned and 
said in tones of command, “ I shouldn’t disturb 
your father now,” to the days when the governess 
said, “ I think it would be better to wait; your 
father is in the study ” ; to those days when the 
mother, upholding, as it were, the sacred torch 
of convention, bade you pause before you bearded 
the lion in his den, there has been an atmosphere 
created giving us the feeling that sacred rites and 
mysteries took place behind that door, and that 
the father was in some way held under a spell 
or enchantment at certain times rendering him 
gruff, indignant about bills, deaf to suggestion 
as to cash payments, and generally a different 
being from him who sat smiling at meal-times. 

Perhaps the good man was really only asleep. 
32 


The Enchanted Parent 33 

There came to Teddy that odd and uncom- 
fortable feeling at the age of twenty-one that 
he did not know if he were grown up, or how 
grown up he was, or if anyone guessed he was 
not properly grown up inside, and that his height, 
manly appearance, and deep voice hid the igno- 
rance of a child. 

True that he smoked a cigar with his father 
after dinner. That awe-inspiring moment oc- 
curred suddenly and unexpectedly. St. Quin ap- 
peared quite abruptly as a human being and not 
as a parent. He said, “ Try one of those cigars, 
they’re not at all bad.” And they were, as he 
had said, not at all bad, which surprised Teddy 
not a little, he having, on the advice of an en- 
terprising tobacconist in Oxford, laid in numer- 
ous boxes of ultra superfine, wonderfully expen- 
sive brands to be consumed by his admiring 
friends! 

Then, again, his father had come out of his 
enchantment and had actually suggested that cer- 
tain shares were not doing so well, which state- 
ment caused Teddy an uneasy evening with a 
dictionary, looking up the words “ preference,” 
“ debenture,” and “ bond ” to his infinite con- 
fusion. 

In the matters of racing, wine, and cards St. 
Quin spoke as one having authority but of a 
kind set higher than those who actually came 
at the matter first hand^ and rather as of a god 


34 St. Quin 

amused at the games of mortals. Or so it seemed 
to his son. 

Of women St. Quin never spoke. It appeared, 
from the almost obvious way he left them out of 
his conversation, that they existed on some in- 
ferior planet, or were admitted to his own simply 
to hold themselves in readiness to be married. 

“ As well leave the stars out of the heavens,” 
thought Teddy, though less poetically. 

True that Mrs. Simpson, the clergyman’s wife, 
was mentioned as wishing subscriptions. “ That 
woman’s been at me again for the Clothing 
Club.” And that Lady Lorbury, St. Quin’s only 
aunt, peered over the family horizon at stated 
intervals with the irritating habit of talking 
French before the servants. She, it appeared, 
existed only to die, since the direction of her 
fortune was St. Quin’s only intimate allusion to 
her. 

Phyllis, who had stayed in the house, together 
with several pretty friends of Barbara’s who 
chatted at table to St. Quin were, apparently, be- 
neath his real consideration, though he was polite 
to each and every one of them. 

“ Nice, clean girls,” he said. “ Nice, clean, 
healthy girls.” Mere attributes, more for animals 
than young goddesses with shapely limbs. 

For all he actually said he might have been a 
man caught up in his early life and bred on a 
mountain apart in an anchorite establishment. 


The Enchanted Parent 35 

And not one of his old friends would have 
recognized, from this description, the gay, the 
debonair, the petticoat-led Dandy St. Quin of 
their youth. 

Now just as life was opening before Teddy as 
a regular well-trodden path leading from Oxford, 
the Empire Theatre of Varieties, and White’s 
Club, to a pew in church and an estate of many 
acres to control, came a thunderbolt, Mr. St. 
Quin playing the part of Jove. 

Three short, crammed full hours melted the 
barriers of years. After them the study-door 
stood open, many things were explained, and 
much hinted at. 

Teddy, as I have said, was twenty-one: that 
fell on a Thursday, and several villages ate free 
and drank free, and school-children blurred their 
faces deliciously with jams of all colours; guns 
were fired, flags flew, and beer flowed. Teddy 
made a very sporting speech, after the manner of 
his advice to young rowing men somewhat ex- 
purgated, since that memorable speech began, 
“ Shove your backs into it and plug like hell.” 
On this occasion he hoped everybody would have 
a good time, and that he would take jolly good 
care they won the cricket cup next year, and that 
he was proud to be the son of his father. 

To which the villagers replied in song to the 
effect that, as far as they were concerned, he was 
a jolly good fellow. 


St. Quin 


36 

Then at dinner his mother wept a little. That 
is to say, when Teddy stood up he saw two large 
tears drop slowly from her eyes and roll down 
her cheeks. And his voice went suddenly husky, 
and his throat refused to swallow, and the faces 
near him seemed to swim. 

His sister came into his room that night and 
kissed him vehemently, and he paid her the first 
compliment he ever had, which was, u Babs, old 
girl, you knocked spots off the whole boiling lot. 
I swear you did!” Which was true. 

When he plunged into the lake next morning 
and came up glistening, fine and strong, he was 
just the ordinary well-fed, perfectly fit young man. 
By twelve o’clock that night he stood on the 
threshold of life, peering out into the darkness, 
and instead of one guiding star there were 
thousands. 

They sat, he and his father, on either side of 
a great white mantelpiece carved with the St. 
Quin arms and celebrated to all who knew their 
English architecture. Grave faces of dead and 
gone St. Quins watched them from the walls. 
On the ceiling, a later and Georgian addition, fat 
cupids held draperies of immense weight to 
reveal a lady of exquisite proportions who ap- 
parently bathed in coronation robes. The big 
windows were open, and owls hooted round the 
yew hedges. A bundle of papers was by St. Quin 
on a small table. 


The Enchanted Parent 37 

“ You are now twenty-one,” said St. Quin. And 
Teddy suddenly felt twelve. 

“ And when one of us comes of age he is told 
this,” said his father, touching the papers with 
his left hand. 

“ Yes, sir,” said Teddy, feeling vaguely guilty. 

“ That old man,” St. Quin went on, pointing 
to a portrait across the room, “ That old man, 
Mathew St. Quin, who had this ceiling put 
in ... ” 

Teddy looked up and saw the eternal smirk of 
the divinely limbed lady, and could not connect 
her with the austere face of old Mathew. 

. . . “ Left us with a very peculiar legacy. 
I’ll give you the papers to read afterwards, but 
I will explain the substance to you now. I sup- 
pose,” he said, with a smile, “ that you think 
I’m a dry old stick.” 

Teddy felt all at once that he knew his father 
very little. 

“ Perhaps I am,” said St. Quin, “ perhaps I’m 
not, but that’s neither here nor there. The re- 
sponsibilities of this place are pretty heavy, and 
I’m writing a history of the county to amuse 
myself, so that may account for it.” 

Teddy gasped. The idea of anyone putting 
pen to paper for amusement seemed to him pre- 
posterous. 

“ Anyhow,” said his father, still smiling, “ old 
Mathew knew his world pretty well. He knew 


St. Quin 


38 

the family pretty well, and the way in which we 
are all apt to become dry old sticks. You see, 
one is bound to be conventional: we St. Quins 
owe something to our country; we are scarcely 
individuals, in fact, with all our property, we 
are stewards to England. We marry, ride 
straight, and look after our tenants. Our lives 
are almost public property. I mean, if you got 
drunk in public, or married beneath you, or did 
anything of that kind, this county would know 
it first, then the rest, and so on, until most of 
England knew it — I mean, the England we know. 
Old Mathew realised that this life of ours was 
nearly, very nearly the life of respectable prison- 
ers. It was bound to be so, as things stand. So 
he left us a legacy in the shape of — what shall I 
say? — a field, and money to grow wild oats, if 
you cared to. It isn’t much, but it’s enough. 
In his own words, it gives us five years’ freedom. 
I wonder if you follow me at all?” 

u Oh, I think I do,” said Teddy. “ One can 
go on the bust for five years, if one wants to. 
But there’s tons to be done here; it’s a ripping 
place, and there are jolly people about, and I 
don’t think I want anything better. Besides, I 
have knocked about a bit,” he said shyly. 

“ My dear fellow,” his father replied, “ of 
course you’ve knocked about a bit, as you say, 
but you’ve lived the regular conventional narrow 
life we are brought up to, even to the knocking 


The Enchanted Parent 39 

about a bit. You have, in fact, done exactly what 
every other young man has done, in exactly the 
same way. You have doubtless been assisted 
home after a wine in a glorious uncertainty as to 
which was the moon and which the lamps in the 
street. I know I have. You have, perhaps, 
waited at stage-doors — I know I have — only I 
think we did it rather better in my day, for we 
did it in style, bouquet in hand. I enjoyed it, 
as no doub f you have. But that isn’t the world, 
it’s only a cultivated garden surrounded by an 
enormous hedge. You see, even our vices are 
carefully prepared for us. 

“ Now old Mathew left us capital bringing in 
very little in his day, but to-day it will bring you 
in a sum of two thousand pounds, which you may 
spread as you like over five years. Or, if you 
like, you may put the sum back to swell the 
capital for the next man. In fact, you can refuse 
your freedom.” 

“ But I say, dad,” said Teddy, “ what the deuce 
could I do? I mean I’m just an ordinary chap, 
not very brainy, and keen on sport. Hadn’t I 
better chuck the whole thing?” 

St. Quin smiled more broadly, and in or- 
der to hide his smile he got up and took a fresh 
cigar. 

“ I say,” said Teddy, feeling very uncomfort- 
able, “what did you do?” 

“ There’s a condition attached to this,” said 


40 


St. Quin 


his father, carefully snipping the end from his 
cigar, “ a very simple condition. We are none 
of us to speak of this, or what we did with our 
freedom for ten years after. Of course, my time 
has been up for many years, still ” he hesi- 

tated, u still, I will only tell you one or two things. 
First of all, very few of us have ever refused 
the money. Again, you needn’t do anything rash 
with it. And again, you must, if you use it, go 
abroad. Travel — that was the old man’s idea. 
Get yourself acquainted with other peoples, (? her 
countries, and other ideas. We ut. Quins are 
apt to think we are the what’s your expres- 

sive phrase? — the whole boiling. And we are 
not, you know. I’ll tell you one thing. I lived 
— of course, this never goes beyond us — as a 
waiter for seven months. I can smell that kitchen 
now, simply delicious.” 

If an angel had come down from heaven and 
asked to borrow a pair of flannel trousers, Teddy 
couldn’t have been more surprised. This im- 
perturbable, regular as clockwork, very strict, con- 
ventional father of his — a waiter! 

He gasped out, “ I say, where?” 

His father leaned against the carved dragons 
of the mantelpiece looking at his son. 

“ I used,” he said, “ to stand on the Piazetta of 
St. Mark’s, after my night’s work was over, and 
watch the light on the Grand Canal, and the gon- 
dolas move past silently, and hear the cries of 


The Enchanted Parent 41 

people by the docks, and loathe the idea of com- 
ing back to this place.” 

“Great Caesar’s ghost!” said Teddy. U I % 
couldn’t do that!” 

“ I didn’t think I could have done it,” said his 
father. “ But I did it, and enjoyed it. You see, 
when my turn came there was less money, the 
last of us had died when he was only thirty, and 
not much had accumulated. I had just over eight 
hundred pounds, and, like you, no knowledge of 
money. It’s a wonderful thing to earn your own 
bread, even if it always tastes of garlic. I slept 
in a room with seven other men, all Italian but 
one, and he was a Swiss — one of the most-trav- 
elled and best-cultivated men I have ever known. 
He’s got the — — . No, I’d better not tell you — 
anyhow, it’s one of the big hotels on the Riviera 
now. It might amuse you to know that we write 
to each other every Christmas.’.’ 

Teddy looked at his father in amazement. This 
was another man, surely. This was a dream, a 
delusion, a snare. No; there stood the Justice 
of the Peace, the quiet, well-groomed gentleman 
who tead prayers every morning. 

“ Does the mater know?” he asked. 

Quite shortly and sharply came the answer, 
“ Not a thing. She knows you may be going 
abroad to complete your education. As a matter 
of fact, it would only begin it.” 

Teddy also rose from his chair. “ I’m blessed 


St. Quin 


42 

if I know what to do,” he said. “ I’m the most 
unromantic chap, and an awful ass, really, and 
I — well, I fairly funk it. I’m all right as I am, 
I think, and I’m quite ready to let the thing go 
and let the next chap scoop the lot. I don’t think 
I should enjoy it a bit, do you?” 

“ You need not decide for a week,” said his 
father. “ But if you had walked across the St. 
Gothard because you hadn’t the money to go in 
the train — or a carriage it was in my day, — or 
slept under trees in an olive-yard, or helped in 
the vineyards, you would go as I should — to- 
morrow. You will never know what comfort is 
until you have thrown away a faded, frayed shirt 
in a field and put on a new, coarse, clean one 
bought out of your own earnings, and sat down 
afterwards to a meal of sausage, wine, bread, and 
raisins. No, never before that.” 

“ But,” said Teddy thoughtfully, “ two thou- 
sand’s a pretty decent sum, it is four hundred a 
year. I ought not to have to mess about to get 
food.” 

“ My dear boy,” said his father, putting a hand 
on his son’s shoulder, “ I lost three hundred and 
fifty of my eight hundred in the first week I had 
to card-sharpers in Brussels.”* 

“Well, it’s awfully decent of you to tell me all 
this, dad,” said Teddy. “ If you don’t mind, I’ll 
think it over.” 

That night Teddy leaned out of his bedroom 


The Enchanted Parent 


43 


window and saw the moon’s silver path across the 
lake, and the big trees, deep in shadow, seem- 
ingly asleep, and that curious twist of his came 
over him by which he began to dream. He saw 
the lonely figure of his father looking over the 
Grand Canal. He saw the sun rise in the Alps, 
and the room where eight waiters snored. 

“ Fancy living in dress-clothes,” was his first 
thought. 

Then the spirit of adventure touched him, and 
he began to see himself wandering across Europe. 
And before he went to sleep he had determined 
to accept the legacy. 

A fanciful mind might picture the empty study 
with the smell of cigar smoke heavy on the air, 
with old Mathew leaning out of his picture-frame 
winking up at the carelessly dressed lady on the 
ceiling. She was supposed to represent Truth 
escaping from the Cloak of Deceit. 


CHAPTER V 


A VERY OLD WORLD 

The house spoke: “ I am a very old house, very 
old, and I have seen Dante cross the vineyard 
below there, and Napoleon in the distance, and 
hosts of painters and poets, and beautiful ladies. 
Youth has played, and sung, and loved, and died 
in my rooms and loggias, and youth is buried in 
the Campo Santo above me, and drowned in the 
lake below me, and I am alive. And life is just 
the same, for still I see lovers, and people who 
quarrel over their wine in my courtyard, and men 
tired from work in the lemon gardens, and women 
carrying babies. And here where you sit, quite 
a hundred young men besides you have thought 
they wished they were dead.” 

Teddy St. Quin leaned against the beautiful 
slender pillar of an arcade and did not hear the 
voice of the house, neither did he pay attention 
to the arms of the Counts of Arco carved over 
his head, nor take any interest in the faded fres- 
coes in the shadow of the walls behind him. In 
a dull way he listened for the sound of a jangling 
bell; and in his hand he held a letter. 

44 


A Very Old World 45 

His world lay before him bathed in Italian sun- 
light, and at the moment he detested every inch 
of it. A peacock, very grave and dignified, pecked 
at crumbs by his feet. A Chianti flask, some 
bread, cheese, and salad stood on a table by his 
side; and in his hand he held a letter. 

The little town below him, its feet in the lake, 
its head in olive-yards, looked as if it had grown 
there. The Campanile of St. Marco stuck up 
here, the Byzantine dome of Sant’ Andrea bulged 
above the burnt umber roofs and sumfaded yel- 
low houses. The twentieth century blazoned her 
presence by way of a great black water-pipe com- 
ing straight down from the hills and entering the 
electric light and power works, whose long sheds, 
steam, smoke, and mass of wires were strangely 
out of keeping with the huddle of ancient houses 
crowded round. 

Long steep roads, all cobble stones, led from 
the town to the mountain villages, passing the 
white pillars of lemon gardens, the grey-green 
tangle of olive-yards, the neat sticks and posts 
of vineyards, and the riot of roses and wistaria 
that showed glorious against the majestic deep 
blue-green of cypress trees. 

Below, a square hole, bounded on three sides 
by houses, on the fourth by the lake, was the 
Market Place, now filled with people, cows, blue 
and green umbrellas, pigs, chickens, children, and 
soldiers. A faint medley of sound rose from it. 


46 


St. Quin 


Teddy paid no attention to all this. He was 
accustomed to it, sick of it, unmoved by its won- 
derful picturesque qualities. 

All he had once thought so quaint was now 
staled by habit. The creaking signs, cut out of 
tin, showing “ Sant’ Antonio,” or the “ Golden 
Flask,” or the “ Post Horn,” and advertising 
good wine; the strange population ii> clothes 
bright or sun-faded, the hunchbacks, jolly looking 
children, rusty priests, Franciscans, beautiful 
girls, burnt-up women, and black-haired, gesticu- 
lating men meant little or nothing to him now. 

All that made up the picture of his world, sour 
smells of drains, of garlic, of drying maize, of 
musty wine cellars; the vivid colours of carna- 
tions growing on window-sills in old tin cans; the 
multitude of rags of all colours; the perfect shape 
of the lemon trees — all these were just his irritat- 
ing, daily, workaday, dull world. 

And the dirt, colour, smell, wonderful feeling 
of old histories and romances were for the mo- 
ment nauseating; while the sky over all, blue, flat, 
and burning, made his eyes ache. 

His clothes disgusted him; his hat, his beard, 
his shoes, his hands — especially his hands — be- 
came objects of loathing. He held a letter in 
his hand. 

If he could but have heard it, the old house 
spoke comfortably to him: “ This, my son, is edu- 
cation. This will teach you the value of things. 


A Very Old World 47 

When your pride is broken, a new sense will take 
its place; it is called variously Compassion, Sym- 
pathy, and Kindness of Spirit. It is worth all the 
gold in the world, and you cannot hoard it, or be 
miserly of it when it really comes, for it is the 
Gift of Giving, and of Healing, and the more 
you spend the more you have to spend.” 

The letter was on thick English paper; the 
stamps were English; the handwriting was Bar- 
bara’s. And it brought back grey skies, and rich 
green fields, and the sight of thatched cottages, 
and tangled lanes of sweet briar, and honeysuckle, 
and dog-roses. 

“ So you did remember, dear old Teddy 
Bear, and I love the clock, but the other 
present was so odd. Are you a cynic now, 
or was it only a kind of moral indigestion? 
What’s the matter? The part about the clock 
and it striking out the hours in the Palace 
on the banks of the Grand Canal at Venice 
was like some beautiful passage out of a 
book. You must have altered an awful lot, 
Teddy — or did you crib it?” 

He had written, “ When you hear the clock 
strike eight you must imagine the Marquise — for 
it is a French clock, and belonged to the Mar- 
quise de Loigny — in bed; a white-and-gold bed, 
with blue silk hangings. The door opens, and 
Eugenie, the maid, comes in with her morning 


48 St. Quin 

chocolate on a silver tray, with the daintiest of 
Sevres cups and the smallest of little biscuits. And 
Fidele, the dog, follows after, wagging good 
morning with his tail. The Marquise looks very 
small and very pretty in the great bed, and she 
opens her blue eyes once and then snuggles into 
the pillows again while Eugenie opens the shut- 
ters. And outside the gondolas swing against 
their painted posts, and the marble of Santa 
Maria della Saluto shines in the morning sun. 

n 

“And the other present,” Barbara writes, 
“ was so odd and unlike you. The little 
purse with all the tiny coins, the wee one 
centime piece, and the rest, with the cryptic 
message : ‘ I send you my savings from all 
the countries I have wandered in.’ 

“ We made out you had been in Spain, 
and Greece, France, Belgium, Germany, Aus- 
tria, and Russia, all in two years and a half, 
and now you live in Italy. Father was in- 
tensely interested. He took them away to 
the study and brought them back to me be- 
fore dinner, and when I asked him what he 
thought he smiled in a funny way and said, 
* It’s a cheap education.’ 

“Yes. I’m twenty-one, and I’m supposed 
to be able to do what I like, but, of course, 
that’s all nonsense, because I’ve got too much 


A Very Old World 49 

money, I suppose, to be able to spend it the 
way I’d like to. In fact, I feel rather like 
a prize cat with a comfortable stall in a 
show and heaps of cream and pink ribbons, 
and an awfully first-prize look about me. 
And mother kind of preens herself and goes 
out a lot more with me; and young men, 
very glossy all over, who look as if they’d 
had their brains ironed with their hats, are 
led up to my altar to have a look at me and 
read the advertisement : ‘ five thousand a 
year and quite tame.’ 

“ I’m fairly intelligent now, in spite of my 
finishing school, and ever so much prettier. 
I do my hair in the new way — you must have 
seen it in Paris — and I’ve been in love about 
six times, once badly, rather a darling, but 
terrifically poor, and his sisters used to go 
to the theatre by train with things over their 
heads, and shawls, and all that. So, of 

course: . But I’ve got over it rather 

disgustingly quickly. As a matter of fact, 
his people all starved to let him be in a swag- 
ger regiment, so our marvellous snobbery 
ruled the day. I’m a little wee bit intrigued 
with a certain Lord Riddleton at the mo- 
ment, one of your sort of men, half a horse 
and half something off a cricket field. He’s 
named a filly after me— Babs — and hopes it 
will win the Derby. I think he thinks he’ll 


50 St. Quin 

marry me if she does, as it would be almost 
a proposal, and besides, it would be unlucky 
not to.” 

So, in like manner, did Barbara’s chatter con- 
tinue. And to Teddy it was like the breath of 
flowers from English meadows. 

A harsh bell jangled. Teddy put the letter 
carefully away in his pocket, squared his shoul- 
ders, walked across the courtyard, through a dim 
hall, and opened a door. Silhouetted against the 
sunlight was Gerald Sunderland. 

Gerald began in Italian: “ I believe one is per- 
mitted to see the pictures?” 

“ I speak English,” said Teddy. 

Instant relief spread over Gerald’s features. 
“ Oh, do you?” he said. “ Then it’s all right, is 
it?” 

Without a word, his heart strangely beating, 
Teddy took some keys from a hook in the wall 
and proceeded to cross the hall and insert one of 
the keys in a doorway on the left-hand side. 

“ You look after this place, I suppose,” said 
Gerald. 

“ I do.” * 

“ Not many people come here, I should think. 
Awful pull up the hill.” 

Teddy opened the door, walked across a dark 
room to a window, and, opening it, let in a flood 
of light. 


A Very Old World 51 

He began. “ The Palace was built for the 
Counts of Arco in 1425. This room was part of 
the original building. The courtyard and arcades 
you see through the windows were added in 1507, 
the old arcade having been destroyed by fire. 
The arms over the fireplace are the arms of the 
Tarabelli family who lived here in 1723, and 
added the fireplace. The two busts on either side 
are of late origin, added by the present owner’s 
father. They are Giovanni Rati, the poet, and 
Canestrini, the naturalist. On your right ” 

“ I say,” said Gerald, “ are you English?” 

“ I was born in England,” said Teddy, “ and 
partially educated there. You are now look- 
ing at a Madonna by Morone. On the left is a 
very fine example of an early Lancret. Interest- 
ing painter, Lancret.” 

“ Good picture that,” said Gerald. 

“ Very strongly influenced by Watteau,” said 
Teddy. 

They passed on into the next room, where all 
the windows were open, and an old Italian woman 
was washing the stone floor. A conversation 
rather resembling a fight took place between 
Teddy and the woman. It amounted merely to 
apologies on her part for being there and ex- 
planations on his side that it was of no conse- 
quence. 

“ Several fair Dutch pictures here,” Teddy be- 
gan, and then recollected himself. “ On the right 


St. Quin 


52 

by the table is a kitchen scene by Teniers, the 
younger Teniers; a Terburg, portrait of a Burgo- 
master. The casket on the table is supposed to 
have belonged to Philippina Welser, 1580. The 
picture further on is by Bellini.” 

Gerald was looking more at Teddy than at the 
pictures. He saw a man whose face was deeply 
burned by the sun, a man with a dark pointed 
beard, a moustache, and hair inclined to be long. 
A man in a cotton coat, blue, and wide work- 
man’s trousers, all very neat and clean. A tall, 
broad, well-knit man. And suddenly, when Teddy 
turned his back on him, for the first time he 
noticed the shape of his head and the set of his 
figure, and knew him. 

The monotonous voice went on. “ The next 
room is used as a bedroom by the Count of Arco 
when he comes in the summer. The furniture 
was given by . . .” 

Gerald broke in. “ Mason stroked the boat 
this year, and we won by three lengths.” 

Teddy started, and turned quickly round. “ I 
beg your pardon?” he said. 

“ Teddy,” said his friend, “ what’s the little 
game?” 

“ Do you care to see the rest of the Palace, 
sir?” 

“ Oh, shut up, Teddy,” said Gerald. “I can 
keep quiet.” 

Teddy St. Quin stood without speaking for a 


53 


A Very Old World 

little while. He fished a roll of cigarette papers 
and a paper of tobacco from his pockets, and 
rolled a cigarette with his nicotine-stained fingers. 

“ Have one of these?” said Gerald offering his 
case. 

Teddy’s hand went out, and drew back. 
“ Thanks, Gerald,” he said, “ I don’t think I 
should appreciate them, now.” 

They walked slowly and silently through a side 
door and out into a beautiful garden. 

In a sheltered walk, under lemon trees covered 
with fruit, they sat down. 

“Yes;” said Teddy, at last, “you find me liv- 
ing in a Palace, showing tourists round other 
people’s pictures for odd lire, or shillings, or 
francs, or any cursed tip. They tip me, Gerry. 
Are you going to?” 

He held out his hand, and looked fiercely into 
his friend’s face. His gaze met the same calm, 
unruffled expression, the same placid eyes, the 
same eyeglass he had always known. 

“ Look here,” said the wise Gerald, “ I don’t 
care a cuss what you are, all I know is that I’ve 
walked in the sun to this confounded place, and 
I want a drink, so buck up, you silly old ass.” 

The outstretched hand trembled. Teddy stood 
up. He scarcely dared use his voice. 

“ White or red?” he asked. 

“ The quickest,” said his friend. 


CHAPTER VI 


CONVERSATION WITH A LUNATIC 

“The Count,” said Teddy, blowing out a cloud 
of smoke, “ is a little fat old man who has grown 
so like his collection of Chinese porcelain that I’m 
told they dust him every morning.” 

“ Half a minute,” said Gerald. “ Who on 
earth is the Count? And what beats me is how 
a chap like you can know anything about pictures 
and porcelain and Italian and all that.” 

“ I think,” said Teddy gravely, “ that you and 
all you chaps and all decent England is mad, and 
I am suddenly sane. I regard you, old chap, as 
a mere lunatic.” 

“ Right-o,” said the imperturbable. “Only for 
Heaven’s sake tell me the story right way up.” 

“ The Count is my employer. I get one hun- 
dred lire a month, that’s about a pound a week. 
I live on the fat of the land and fare sumptuously 
every day. I am not wearing my purple, but my 
fine linen is in evidence. I sing like the birds 
and sleep like a dog.” 

“ My good man,” said Gerald, “ I came up to 
your crow’s nest of a place, that’s half falling to 

54 


Conversation with a Lunatic 55 

pieces, and found a dull, sullen, hungry-looking 
chap who looked as if a good meal ” 

“ And a bath, Gerry. Don’t, I implore you, 
forget the bath.” 

His friend waited a moment before speaking. 
“ Bar rot, old chap,” he said, “ you’ve got a bath, 
of course — one of those travelling things?” 

Teddy paused reflectively. “ June, let me see 
— April, yes, I had a bath in April.” 

“ Good Lord!” 

“ Perhaps I had better tell you in my own way. 
The Count and I met in Bergamo, in the cathe- 
dral. We agreed about some inscription, I re- 
member, and he asked me to lunch, which was 
lucky, as I hadn’t dined the night before. He’s 
a very good old fellow, and I think the meal 
loosened my tongue. Anyhow, in an angry way, 
and looking exactly like a Chinese grotesque, he 
forced me to come with him to his hotel. That 
was lucky, as I hadn’t one of my own.” 

“ No money! ” said Gerald incredulously. 

“ I believe,” Teddy replied, “ that I’m the 
richest pauper in Europe. However, the affair 
ended in my taking this job.” 

“ Which you are pretending to like.” 

“ I have become a philosopher,” said Teddy. 
“ I believe it’s the easiest way of bearing other 
people’s troubles.” 

“ Could I ask a simple question?” said Gerald. 

“ That,” Teddy answered, “ is the easiest thing 


St. Quin 


56 

in the world. The trouble with life is that there 
are no simple answers.” 

“ Teddy, just tell me this. How, in this short 
space of time, have you changed from a decent, 
ordinary chap into a kind of odd, twisted, grin- 
ning devil with a black beard?” 

Teddy looked out across the lake. Little 
steamers, full of importance, showed fairy-lights 
on the smooth waters. In the restaurant the hotel 
orchestra was playing some light, lilting vaLe 
from a Viennese opera. He had been dining with 
Gerald; had been, for the first time in months, in 
respectable company. And, as he looked across 
the lake, he knew that he was not one of these 
people: a wider, more wise, community claimed 
him. 

“ Of course,” he said, at last, “ there’s a 
woman in it. Throw your ordinary man off his 
balance by opening the door of the world sud- 
denly and he falls straight into the arms of some 
woman. She may be good, or bad, or indifferent. 
Mine was indifferent. Civilisation, Gerry, has 
created a kind of viciously intellectual being of 
the female gender, who is stuffed with all the little 
meats of culture. She reads Chinese poetry, and 
adores Aubrey Beardsley, and goes in for Spirit- 
ualism and the New Thought. She’s infernally 
clever, artificially intense, knows a smattering of 
everything, and has the soul of a cat. But she 
can purr, and she looks soft.” 


Conversation with a Lunatic 57 

“ An actress,” said Gerald, in a tone of com- 
passion. “ My dear fellow! ” 

Teddy turned to him with a sardonic grin. 
“ Gerry, old boy, how gorgeously old-fashioned 
you are, a real splendid Antimacassar Period man, 
who thinks that every actress has the brains to 
be really evil. Why, most of them are as stupid 
as ladies, and half of them are ladies, for the 
matter of that. I mean good, child-bearing, 
house-keeping women, with sons at public schools. 
No, I don’t mean an actress, I mean a woman. 
A woman, Gerry, is a new uninvestigated animal. 
She has only sprung out of the bed of mo?s roses 
our mothers were born in by a species of super- 
cultivation. She talks quite as coarsely as any 
man, only she pretends it is merely an interest in 
human nature. And she doesn’t often marry 
unless she’s hard up. I can only thank God for 
that. My good lady was as chaste and virginal 
as absinthe. I gave her lunch, dinner, expensive 
flowers — forced ones, always, though she could 
gas about the spring with the best. We went to 
picture galleries, to odd little theatres where they 
played odd little plays, mostly morbid, and when 
they were not morbid they were disgusting. We 
obliterated everything simple from our dictionary, 
and talked about Simplicity as if we’d invented it. 
She said she loved queer, savage jewellery, so I 
gave her queer, savage jewellery. She had a fancy 
to dine in a room all purple, so I arranged a pur- 


St. Quin 


58 

pie room. I was drunk, mad, eager, but never 
infatuated. I never even kissed her. And she 
married a Brazilian millionaire. But and he 
banged his fist on the table — “ though it cost me 
just over a thousand pounds it was worth it. I 
learnt. I had the habit of going to see pictures, 
plays, of reading books. After she left Paris I 
read everything I could lay hands on. Some fire 
in me from some forgotten ancestor blazed up. 
My hatred of that woman caused the curtain of 
suffering to draw aside and show me the not 
very edifying picture of this rotten modern 
world. And until to-day I’ve never told a soul. 
There ! ” 

“ Of course, you are all wrong,” said Gerald. 
“ Only I’m not clever enough to know where. 
But, Teddy, why not go home? You’re a rich 
man ” 

“ One moment, old man. I gave myself, or I 
was given, two thousand pounds to complete my 
education. How, or why, doesn’t matter. I have 
exactly three hundred and twenty-one pounds, 
eleven shillings, and four-pence left, with three 
bad five-franc pieces I can’t pass. I have two 
years and a half left of my time. I can’t ask for 
more, and I can’t tell you why — but there it is. 
I am saving that three hundred odd like a miser, 
and I’m going to invest it in something that will 
complete my education, but not for a year. After 
my five years I shall go home, settle down, marry, 


Conversation with a Lunatic 59 

and live the splendid life of the blind, which we 
all do. The wilfully, deliberately blind.” 

Gerald looked at his friend with a certain com- 
passion. In a dim way he understood, but only 
as a looker-on may understand the feelings of 
those he sees in a wreck, or some violent up- 
heaval. 

His face reddened as he said, “ I’m going to 
be married in a year. She’s a girl who lives near 
us, Doris Martyr. I think you’ll like her awfully. 
She’d like you. And I wish you’d come and get 
to know her; she’d do you good.” 

“ You dear old idiot,” said Teddy affection- 
ately. “ You’re the best chap in the world. No- 
body on earth wishes you better luck than I do, 
and, though I shan’t be at the wedding, I’ll send 
my wishes across the ocean. I suppose you’ll 
be a pillar of the State, and go to meaningless 
functions in ridiculous clothes, and enjoy it all im- 
mensely. And, while I laugh, I know it’s your 
sort who hold the world together. Sober, honest, 
upright, splendid people, as clear as daylight.” 

“ I know she’d do you good,” Gerald persisted. 

“ Do you know,” said Teddy, “ that only one 
person has done me good, in the shape of man, 
and one in the shape of woman, since I’ve been 
paddling my own canoe? ” 

“ You must have met a rum lot, then.” 

“ I have met any number of charming chame- 
leons whose opinions change colour against every 


6o 


St. Quin 


more powerful personality; people with artificial 
skins and artificial sins; people who live to please 
and be entertained. And I’ve met, since I’ve 
been earning my own living, any number of people 
who call themselves Socialists, and most of those 
want to do less work for more money. That’s 
very natural, but they are more insidiously evil 
than the others. They want that money in order 
to compete with the modern money madness, the 
craze to be merely rich, the greedy speculating 
craze. The rich and vulgar build hotels and 
ships like palaces, and eat food they don’t under- 
stand in rooms they can’t appreciate. And the 
poor Socialists raise their hands in horror and 
their voices in cursing because they can’t do like- 
wise. And yet both the people I met, whom I 
have loved, were Socialists,” 

“ I know these sort of problems exist,” said 
Gerald, “ but you and I, my dear chap, have got 
to keep our end up — I mean, the decent old 
family idea, all square and healthy. You talk as 
if the world was a rotten place. Look at this 
place, isn’t it beautiful?” 

From the terrace where they sat the moonlight 
rippled on the waters of the lake, the lights in the 
hotel garden threw into startling relief masses of 
flowers round which fireflies played; there was 
an agreeable hum of voices, and the hidden or- 
chestra played soothing airs to well-fed people. 
Every now and again pale-faced waiters hurried 


Conversation with a Lunatic 61 

across the avenues of light bearing trays of re- 
freshments; and far away out of the darkness 
came the sound of some women singing. 

“ Yes,” said Teddy, “ it is beautiful. But don’t 
forget I live here, and am poor, and know the 
peasants and go into their houses and — well, how 
can the politics of a one-horse place interest you? 
I was going to tell you of my friends. One was a 
monk, a Franciscan. The simplest, most lovable 
man in the world. Do you know Browning’s 
lines, ‘ What if that friend happened to be God? ’ 
That friendship was written all over his face. It 
was his Socialism, a perfect panacea for all human 
evils. He had a heart so large that it could take 
in the whole world, and then cry for more people 
to love. He is dead. He had the soul of a little 
child, and he was the son of a miller.” 

His voice dropped. A hush came over the 
garden. A raucous voice broke in. 

“ Deux Munich, deux,” as a waiter hurried 
past. 

“ And the other? ” asked Gerald. 

Teddy smiled. “ You’ll think I’m an awfully 
odd chap,” he said boyishly, “ but the other was 
a little girl I met at Bergamo, when I was ter- 
ribly hard up, just before the Count collared me 
for this job. I had a little work there at first, 
I call it work because it brought me in a few 
pence. I hung about the doors of the churches 
hoping that English people would come there and 


62 


St. Quin 


want a guide. I’m getting a bit learned that way, 
you know; more so now as the old Count’s library 
is stocked with books on art of all kinds. Any- 
how, the child and I palled up. As Kipling says, 
‘ I learned about women from ’er.’ Lucretia her 
name was, a wise child, wise enough and sweet 
enough to sit by me and say nothing when I was 
miserable. But the goodness of her heart flowed 
out of her and covered me like a cloak. Her 
remedy was the same as the good Father’s — 
Love. I asked her once what she would do if 
she was very unhappy, and she answered at once, 
‘ Find somebody to love me.’ And then I asked 
her what she would do if she was rich, and well, 
and happy, and she answered at once, ‘ Find lots 
of people to love.’ But that Freemasonry of 
Love is a- secret, and I haven’t got it. I may — 
who knows? ” 

And between these two men fell that very 
silence of understanding which is beyond under- 
standing, and which is love itself. 


CHAPTER VII 


MARGINAL NOTES 

After a two days’ excursion into respectability 
Teddy became aware of the fact that he wanted 
to move on. It is a habit with young men to de- 
sire events to move quickly, to find themselves the 
principal actors in some situation. Just as it is an 
adventure for a woman to buy a new hat, so is 
it an adventure with a man to buy a new head. 
That is, accepting the idea that every experience 
must be paid for. And every excursion into a 
new phase of life procures for the tourist a new 
head. Who has seen great mountains for the 
first time and has not felt that at least his back- 
ground to life has changed? Who has not met a 
woman who affects him but he becomes a new 
man? At forty-five, shall we say, a man becomes 
set, and the seeds of adventure fall on stony 
ground. 

Gerald had gone home. His utter incapacity 
to understand Teddy had resulted in one sentence 
that made Teddy smile now — “ It may be all 
right, old chap, but it’s not done.” That sentence 
is the religion of about a quarter of the world. 

63 


St. Quin 


64 

Your butcher, your baker, and your candlestick 
maker can say no more. But there is a class of 
person drifting on the edge of every kind of so- 
ciety who know no rules. They have wandered 
from their tribe, seen strange things, and they 
live for ever outcasts. Teddy knew plenty of 
them. Was he not one himself? 

Seated on the summit of the hill behind the 
Palace in an old burial-ground surrounding a 
ruined church, he pondered deeply of those people 
with whom he had cast in his lot. He knew them 
at first sight. There were people possessing, or 
feigning to possess, the titles of Captain. Every 
watering-place held at least two. Men with an 
absurd military air, slightly shiny clothes, and 
very punctilious manners. When they arrived at 
well-known haunts of society the police generally 
sought carefully in records and papers to see if 
they might be such an one who was, as the saying 
is, “ wanted.” Again, there were the obviously 
bluff and hearty people, the men who spoke to 
one in a strange hotel on sight, conveying the idea 
that they were the incarnation of honesty, good 
fellowship, and liberality. One such had come by 
fifty pounds of Teddy’s cash in Florence. It was 
a cheap lesson. There were, besides these, any 
number of odd folk who frequented the cheaper 
boarding-houses of the Continent: old ladies 
without any address; foxy-faced young men who 
had fallen out of favour at home, perhaps had 


Marginal Notes 65 

been just saved the clutches of the law; peculiar 
and very suspicious people dressed as English 
clergymen, seeking for pupils; and the vast army 
of pathetic people with “ drink ” written plain on 
their faces. 

He recalled a conversation with a woman in 
the woods behind St. Cloud, near Paris. She had 
lunched at the next table to his at a time when he 
was cursing himself for certain expensive follies. 
He remembered her face when the waiter pre- 
sented the bill. She searched her bag, her one 
pocket, the ground about her, the inside of her 
parasol. Her face became suddenly white. She 
began to explain to the waiter that she had lost 
her purse, or that it had been stolen. The waiter 
helped in a fruitless search. Then he shrugged 
his shoulders and suggested fetching the man- 
ager. Teddy remembered how she had pulled 
herself together and demanded that the manager 
should be sent for, and at once, and when the 
waiter had gone about his errand how her face 
had looked all at once frightened and haunted. 
He had stepped across from his table, bowed, 
and asked to be allowed to assist her just as the 
manager came up. The manager, he remem- 
bered, gave one glance at the woman, and then, 
as if he had summed her up in that second, de- 
manded payment. Teddy had paid the bill, and 
in a glance the manager summed him up also. It 
had the aspect of a small tragedy out there, with 


66 


St. Quin 


the sun, the little tables, the fruit and flowers, and 
the coffee cups. The tragedy was greater than he 
knew for the moment. 

He was walking afterwards in the woods, 
smoking a cigarette, when he heard the woman’s 
voice behind him calling upon him to stop. He 
waited for her, standing in a beautiful glade. She 
came up to him, and thrust some money into his 
hand. “ There,” she said in perfect English, 
“ take it — take it.” She had thrust his hand 
roughly away. He was about to protest when it 
occurred to him that she had found her purse. 
“Madame has found her purse, then?” To 
which she replied, “ Oh, you fool, you fool! ” and 
had burst into tears, sinking at his feet under the 
trees. 

“ I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said 
lamely. 

“ No, boy — how should you? Something came 
over me. Now I’ve ruined my complexion.” 

The tears, running down her face, bore with 
them the black from her eyelashes, a dingy 
stream. 

“ And still I don’t understand.” 

“Never seen that trick before?” she asked, 
mopping her eyes. 

“ I saw no trick.” 

“ No, babe, and never will — not with those 
eyes. Look at me; I’m painted, aren’t I? An- 
swer.” 


Marginal Notes 


67 


“ Well — yes.” 

“Painted; quietly dressed; looking about 
thirty? ” she asked rather wistfully. 

“ Younger,” he answered. 

“ Good boy; mother’s darling. I’m over forty, 
you idiot.” A fresh outburst of tears. 

“ And still I fail to understand.” 

She sat up abruptly. “ Well, understand now, 
my young pretty pigeon? That man hires me to 
do that. The manager, I mean. They don’t pay 
him enough, so I work for him. I sit looking as 
nearly like a lady as I can, next to the greenest 
thing I can find, and pretend to lose my purse. 
You didn’t notice that I only had cheese and cof- 
fee, and the bill came to two pounds. I get five 
shillings of that, and Jules collars the rest. I do 
it here and at several other places. It’s very sim- 
ple — like you.” 

“ Yet you give me my money back,” he said. 
“Why?” 

“Why?” she answered. “Why? Because, 
all at once, when you spoke so quietly you re- 
minded me of someone. That’s why. And be- 
cause I’m a fool.” 

Teddy sat down beside her. “ You’re not a 
fool,” he said. “ It was a jolly plucky thing to 
do. Do you — do you want any money?” he said 
awkwardly. 

She flared up immediately. “ Anybody but a 
drivelling lunatic would know that. Do I look 


68 


St. Quin 


like Carnegie? Do I? Don’t I look what lam? 
And doesn’t everybody want money?” 

“ I say, can’t I be any help? I mean, because 
I reminded you of somebody.” 

“ Look here, kid,” she answered, “ you’re 
straight and decent. I don’t know what you’re 
doing, but you’ve just seen trouble. Trouble with 
a man like you means a woman. I know, believe 
me, my lamb — I do know. You don’t know what 
it is to talk decently to a decent man. I was all 
right once, and now I’m on the best road to hell 
I can pay for. Do you twig that? Chuck it, 
dear boy, and go home and play cricket, and 
marry some skin-and-bone girl, and live in a house 
of your own, and never leave her alone night 
after night. Oh, God, you men! Never leave 
her alone, because you don’t know how tender 
some women are, especially about little things. I 
suppose you’re one of the gilded lads with a long 
purse and an anxious mother. Well, you chuck 
Paris and the bust you’ve been going — I know — 
and go back home and be dull — be as cursedly 
dull as they know how to be in that sanctimonious 
country of yours.” 

“ If I help you — could you go back? ” he 
asked. 

“ Look here, dear,” said this strange creature, 
her hand on his arm, “ You’re a good sort. I 
could have gone back years ago, but I didn’t, and 
now I can’t. That’s why I want you to. I have 


Marginal Notes 69 

taken a fancy to you, haven’t I ? I want you to 
go back because, if you wander about as some of 
you boys do, the life takes hold of you and you 
can’t go back. It unsettles you; it makes you fit 
for nothing. I’ve been to America, first-class 
there and back, and I’ve stopped in all the best 
hotels in Europe, and I thought I was a lady. 
And it was on money my husband stole — oh, I 
was good then — and he shot himself in Berlin, 
just as the police came up the stairs. It’s a pretty 
story, isn’t it? I could have gone back then. 
Some dear kind people wanted to patronise me, 
and give me Church work to do. Me! Do you 
see me all smug, doing the prim act at a charity 
school? I’m from a village where we had a 
farm, the big farm. Do you see me in a dairy 
now, looking pink and white in a print dress? I’d 
go back to-morrow, if I could — but you can’t, 
you know. This wandering life is poison. But 
you just reminded me of someone.” 

“ I’m going to see life a. bit,” he said, “ and 
settle down afterwards.” 

“ All right,” she answered. “ Go your own 
fool way. I’m going mine. Help me up.” 

He had given her his hands, and helped her 
to her feet. 

“ You’re backing the wrong horse,” she 
said. 

“ I think not,” he replied gravely. “ I’ve got 
a life of conventionality before me, and I’ve got 


70 


St. Quin 


a few years free. That’s all. I’m going to see 
men and things. I’ve got a lot to learn.” 

“ Well, take good care who teaches you. 
You’re a man who likes talking to women, well, 
don’t forget that no woman, not even the best, 
can afford to speak the truth. That’s our de- 
fence, lying. I don’t mean lying to hurt, but 
lying to keep from being hurt. I have met one or 
two good women in my day, but I don’t under- 
stand them. I always think they’re getting at 
me. Stand sideways, will you? Yes, you are 
like him, only better looking. Good-bye, kid. 
No, don’t offer me anything.” 

“ And I can’t help?” 

She held him by the lapels of his coat, and 
looked up into his face. 

“ Yes, you can, and you will, I know. I’ve got 
a boy; he’s about your age now; a bit younger. 
He thinks I’m dead. His name’s Marley. He 
went for a sailor. If you ever get a chance, do 
him a good turn. Robin Marley. It’s the ghost 
of a chance. He comes from Chendle. You 
won’t forget — Robert Marley from Chendle. 
And if you ever see him, don’t say anything about 
me — anyhow, it’s not my name. They changed 
his after my man shot himself.” 

“ I will find him when I go home.” 

“ I think you will. You’re the right sort, I 
think. Ta, ta, kid.” 

“Won’t you take this, just for a remem- 


Marginal Notes 71 

brance?” He had produced two five-pound notes 
from his pocket. “ Don’t be offended, but I’d 
like to think ” 

She put up her face, pulled his head down, and 
kissed his hair. “ All right, boy. God bless you 
— that can’t do you any harm. Stay there.” 

She ran quickly through the trees. 

And it came back as clearly as if it had hap- 
pened yesterday, as Teddy sat dreaming on the 
hill. 

Behind him, backed by cypress trees that 
seemed to hold the secret of silence, were rain 
and wind-battered pictures of the Stations of the 
Cross. In front of him the vast landscape, olive- 
yards stretching down to the lake, snow-capped 
mountains beyond, and above all the burning 
sky. 

Was he, he wondered, drifting as that woman 
had said he would drift? Was he unfitting him- 
self to take up his life where he had left off, the 
life of ease and comfort and of regular rules and 
habits? After all, what did it matter — what did 
anything matter in a topsy-turvy world? 

He remembered his father, and could now link 
him up with the story of his life in Venice as a 
waiter: there must be a queer strain of Bohemian- 
ism in the St. Quin blood. It was a year since he 
had seen an English newspaper, and it didn’t seem 
to matter, yet Gerald’s news of the boat race had 
stirred him; Gerald’s other news amused him. 


72 St. Quin 

It showed exactly what things he thought im- 
portant in life. Apparently there had been a little 
war up in the hills in India. * Gerald knew about 
that because a friend of his had been wounded. 
County cricket, a divorce case, a few new taxes, 
and a new invention — these had been his news, 
the garnerings of two and a half years. In an- 
other two and a half years he would be talking in 
just the same way. 

There was a rustle of skirts across the grass, 
but he did not hear it. He had fallen asl^ ) 
dreaming that he would remain in this spot until 
he died an old man, quite an Italian. 

A girl stood over him, hesitating. She smiled 
at the long, lean figure asleep on the grass, and 
wondered if she should prod him with her para- 
sol. She was about eighteen, short, with a slim 
body, and a face lit by wonderful eyes. When 
you thought of her face you thought only of her 
eyes. They danced with light. They were deep 
brown, with sparks of fire in them, and they were 
almost absurdly innocent. Her father, a stout 
man of forty, with a mop of hair and a clean- 
shaven, humorous face, toiled up the slope, mop- 
ping his face. 

He was about to speak, when she silenced him 
by putting a finger to her lips. 

“ See, mon pere, I have found it, and it is mine. 
It shall have its sleep first, while you smoke your 
cigar, and then I will prod it, and it will wake 


Marginal Notes 73 

and stare, and then kneel down and kiss my 
hand.” 

The stout man chuckled. “ Have your way, 
Mariette, for me I smoke a good cigar — pouf! ” 

He sat heavily upon the grass and leaned 
against the wall of the old churchyard! 

Mariette sat by him, regarding the sleeping 
figure. “ He is called Raoul,” she said, “ and he 
is a prince in disguise.” 

“ I observe merely the disguise to be very per- 
fect,” said her indulgent father. “ But prince — 
no.” 

“ He is a prince because of his hands, which are 
good,” she answered. “ But he shall walk be- 
hind me in the Rue Royale and carry my parcels. 
And when I marry he shall shave off his beard, 
and my husband shall say, ‘Ah, it is the prince; 
my old fellow, how are you?’ And they shall 
embrace.” She broke off suddenly. “ Why did 
we come here — it is dull.” 

“I wish to see some furniture in the Palace; 
they tell me there are some good pieces.” % 

“ Always your old furniture,” she said, pout- 
ing. “ But we go to Venice, n } est-ce pas > and buy 
some coral for me? ” 

“Am I your slave?” he answered affection- 
ately. 

She rewarded him by one of her entrancing 
smiles. “ You are a fat old darling,” she said. 
“ And I shall never marry, but I shall live always 


St. Quin 


74 

with you and Henriette, and the cat, and the 
dusty old furniture. And now ” 

Teddy had awakened at the sound of voices. 
He rolled over on the grass, thinking to see some 
peasants, started, pulled himself together, and 
bowed. 

“ Monsieur,” said the girl, “ can you direct us 
to the Palace? ” 

He found himself looking at the marvellous 
eyes. 

“ We wish to see the pictures and the furni- 
ture,” said the stout man. 

“ It is my privilege to show them to you my- 
self,” said Teddy. 

“Am I speaking to the Count of Arco?” the 
stout man enquired. 

“ I fear not,” said Teddy gravely. “ I am 
merely his servant. May I show you the 
way? ” 

He led the way through the woods, down the 
steep cobbled road, and into the courtyard of the 
Palace. There, in a monotonous voice, he began 
his recitation in French. He had got no further 

than “ This Palace was built in the year ” 

when he found that both his listeners had van- 
ished. Voices came from the hall behind him. 

“Mon Dieu! ” the stout man was saying, 
“ here is a couch of the First Empire, and per- 
fect — perfect! ” 

“ It is indeed a little cabbage of a couch.” 


Marginal Notes 75 

“Tut! Mariette, it is indeed a most beautiful 
affair. And look — that pair of candlesticks.” 

Teddy found the man almost dancing with ex- 
citement. The girl smiled at him, and he smiled 
back at her. It was the beginning of a long 
friendship. 

“ My father is an enthusiast,” she said. 

“ Monsieur,” exclaimed that gentleman, “ I am 

Tut! Mariette, where is my letter-case — 

ah, it is here. Permit me — my card. Auguste 
Serge, Dealer in Objects of Art. You know the 
name?” he asked, a little anxiously. 

“ Who does not? ” said Teddy, who had never 
heard it before. 

“ We begin to be known,” cried Monsieur 
Serge. “ This is my wicked child, Mariette. You, 
sir, must charm yourself to live here. Mon 
Dieu, those chairs, a set. These are not for sale 
— no ? ” 

“ My employer,” said Teddy, laying great 
stress on the word, “ is a great collector, but his 
best things are not here.” 

The little man was a perfect fountain of en- 
thusiasm. He talked at the top of his voice at 
great length, and laughed tremendously as they 
went the round of the Palace. 

He ran from piece to piece in the rooms, ad- 
miring, criticising, rejecting. Mariette’s laughter 
filled in the few pauses. 

For the first time Teddy felt that the place was 


St. Quin 


76 

interesting. Tourists had come in numbers be- 
cause it was one of the easy excursions from the 
town, but they were mostly dulled by over many 
palaces and churches. As a rule, they grunted 
yes and no, gave their tips at the door, and left 
with an obvious sense of relief. With these 
people it was different. 

Mariette took possession of Teddy. While 
her father was pouring out his knowledge, his 
benedictions on cabinet-makers, his curses on old 
furniture forgers, his appreciation of good and 
bad painters, she carried on a little rippling in- 
timate conversation with Teddy as they walked 
through the rooms. 

“ It must be dull here.” 

A booming voice from a corner of the room. 
“ But it is wonderful. Here I find the best Em- 
pire clock I have seen for years — for all my life. 
Perfect. I would give ten thousand francs for 
it.” 

“ I am only the concierge.” 

“ Do you expect us to believe you?” from 
Mariette. 

“ As you like, but it is true. You will go to 
Venice, I suppose?” 

“Oh, yes. You like Venice? I adore to see 
it.” 

Again the voice like the hum of some gi- 
ant bee, and now proceeding from the next 
room. 


Marginal Notes 77 

“This bed! Where is that child? Marvel- 
lous. And all perfect. And the chairs! ” 

Mariette leant by an open window, and Teddy 
stayed by her. 

“ It must be lonely,” she said. 

“What should you know of loneliness?” he 
asked, smiling. 

“ You should see,” was her answer. “ In the 
day there is dejeuner to put ready, and then din- 
ner. And before and after always musty, dusty 
men of a hundred years old, who talk musty, 
dusty talk of a thousand years ago. It is all old 
— so old. Books, china, chairs, men, talk — all 
old.” 

The thought came to him that she was a fairy 
caught in cobwebs. 

From the passage came again the enthusiast’s 
voice. “A Canaletto, and a beauty! I should 
say one of his best. Perfect. Tut — in this place 
of places! Where is that child? ” 

They finished the tour of inspection, and stood 
by the door. It was always Teddy’s worst mo- 
ment. They were going to tip him. 

Monsieur Serge shook him violently by both 
hands. “ To-night we talk. We are at the ‘ Al- 
bergo del Sole.’ Not much of a place, but clean 
and good. You dine with us, and tell us more 
of these wonderful things. I see you understand 
them. My daughter, she is for hats, and pud- 
dings, and dresses, and earrings. You come?” 


78 


St. Quin 


“ I shall be delighted,” said Teddy, looking at 
Mariette. 

“ Well,” said Mariette to her father as they 
descended the hill, “ didn’t I say he’d be a 
prince? ” 

1 “ My darling,” he replied, “ who would not be 

a prince who lived with those things? ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE FAIRY IN THE COBWEB 

And this is really how Teddy St. Quin came to 
invest the last of his money. 

If the purse of Monsieur Serge had been as 
great as his enthusiasm, he would have been one 
of the richest men in the world. It turned out, 
during the dinner at the “ Albergo del Sole,” that 
the business of Monsieur Serge was in quite a 
small way. It turned out that he was rather 
easily swindled, not in the matter of his antiqui- 
ties but by his friends, relations, rash investments, 
and beggars. 

“ But you will understand,” he said, tucking 
his napkin under his chin for the twentieth time, 
“ that we make a way. This little holiday is an 
investment. I show my daughter the great world. 
And for myself it is good, because to speak know- 
ingly of great cities to your customers is an ad- 
vantage. For example, this holiday is from an 
old lute from Germany. He comes in, the gentle- 
man, and looks round. He says, ‘Bon jour , 
Serge, what have you of interest to-day? ’ He is 
rich, and once I sell him a book for two francs. 

79 


8o 


St. Quin 


That is all. But to-day I have my lute, a beauti- 
ful piece, eh, Mariette?” 

“ But can this interest Monsieur ? ” 

“ It comes to me,” cried Monsieur Serge, “ that 
I do not know how to address you.” 

“ You shall call me whatever you please,” said 
Teddy. 

With a wink that puckered all his face the little 
man leaned across the table. “ When you were 

sleeping Mariette says to me ” 

“ Mais non, papa,” cried Mariette. “I beg 
— oh, Monsieur, do not listen ! ” 

“ She says to me, ‘ He is a prince in disguise, 
I shall call him Raoul.’ ” And the little man 
laughed till he choked. 

Mariette was covered with confusion. “ It 
was in fun,” she whispered, blushing. 

“ Let us all be in fun, then,” said Teddy. “You 
shall call me Raoul if I may call you the Fairy in 
the Cobweb.” 

It was impossible not to take these people in a 
spirit of fun. It oozed out of Serge, it bubbled 
over in Mariette’s eyes. They played at life, 
the one like an overgrown puppy, the other like 
a kitten. So it became, “ Raoul. Good morn- 
ing, Raoul. Will you come out with me to-day, 
please, Raoul?” And later, “Dear Raoul, I 
am very unhappy, may I have some chocolates? ” 
She was a delightful child. And always Teddy 
waited on her. “ Fairy, you must keep very still 


The Fairy in the Cobweb 81 

while I add up these figures.” But this came 
later. 

They stayed a week. At the end of that time 
they returned to Paris — all three of them. 

Teddy received a laconic note from the Count, 
“ Do better for yourself, certainly.” 

The shop was in the Rue des Beaux Arts, a 
dingy shop overcrowded with tables and chairs, 
sofas, clocks, couches, screens, and chests of 
drawers. Chairs hung from the ceiling and 
looked like mad bats in the dark. You banged 
your shins on the sharp corners of bureaus, you 
found yourself reflected in twenty old mirrors, 
you took money at a Louis Seize desk, dipped 
your pen in a penny inkpot, and ruled the ledgers 
with a sixteenth-century brass ruler. 

Clocks ticked and struck all manner of odd 
hours at odd times. Snuffless snuff-boxes lay 
alongside ivory models of ships; rows of brass 
candlesticks, jugs, bowls, and vases shone dimly 
out of the gloom. There were things in the shop 
that were never sold and never would be, the 
flotsam and jetsam of sales. Books on every dull 
subject toppled about on every available floor- 
space. Stacks of prints bulged out of broken 
portfolios that stood in boxes outside the doors. 
There was a free chair for Monsieur Serge, a 
free chair for Teddy, and just enough passage- 
room from the street to the inner door for Mari- 
ette to whisk through, looking exactly as Teddy 


82 St. Quin 

first thought of her, a dainty fairy in the midst 
of cobwebs. 

Teddy became partner in this muddled concern. 
Partly because he found himself with a passion 
for old furniture, and partly to be near the dainty 
Mariette. 

The feeling between them was one of deep af- 
fection. She behaved like a mother, a sister, a 
baby, and a fairy. She seemed to have a great 
heart and no soul. It is certain she had no brains. 
She adored her father, she adored Teddy, “ mon 
cher, Raoul.” She adored Henriette, the stout, 
beaming Breton woman who sewed on every- 
body’s buttons, and she adored the cat. 

Serge worshipped her. “ To me she is a mar- 
vel always,” he used to say to Teddy. “ Her 
mother died when she was born. But, you know, 
my dear Raoul, that her mother — who was an 
angel — was not a very beautiful angel — no. She 
had eyes — yes, and a mouth, and so and so, but 
even I who adored her could not boast of her 
beauty. Now this little one is ravishing — eh?” 
And he would give a great laugh and pat Teddy 
on the arm. “ I am worried for her sometimes. 
She is what you call her — feerique. She is here, 
she is there — like a butterfly. You know, before 
you came to us, times were not so good now and 
then. She never could understand. No. She 
must have sunlight, and her days in the country, 
and her chocolates, and her nice clothes, and 


The Fairy in the Cobweb 83 

laugh — always laughing. I thank God and the 
Blessed Saints for that, but there must come a 
day when she will break hearts — and will she 
laugh? 

“ Again, I cannot live for ever, and Henriette 
is old, and Mariette does not know what is a gold 
coin or a franc, or how to sew, or to cook, or to 
know the world. She loves, or she hates. She 
has no reason. ‘ No,’ she says, 4 1 love — I hate. 
I adore — I detest.’ ” And then the good man 
would laugh himself. “ You and I, Raoul, we 
must make a fortune for her.” 

Teddy had never told them that he was going 
to leave them. Truth to tell, Monsieur Serge 
was very like his daughter, a kind of stout butter- 
fly, with no knowledge of money himself, and it 
was obvious, in a very short time, that Teddy’s 
money had arrived at rather a critical moment. 
More investments had gone wrong. 

Mariette accepted Teddy’s presence as she ac- 
cepted her meals, her comfortable bed, the minis- 
trations of Henriette, and the purrings of the cat. 
Where others gave pennies in the streets she gave 
francs; where others thought gravely of the poor, 
of the terrible crimes in the bad districts, she 
smiled. A canary, perhaps, a mere bird, yet not 
quite — she could love in her way. 

She threw upon Teddy the responsibility of her 
entire affection. He must have his arm taken and 
pressed, his hair ruffled, his serious admonish- 


84 St. Quia 

ments pouted at, his every spare moment occu- 
pied. 

At dejeuner she would perhaps begin some 
ridiculous nonsense. “ There was once a croco- 
dile who became a dressing-bag in his youth. 

. . . ” She would take him to Mass at Notre 
Dame and pray with abandon until something or 
somebody in the congregation amused her, and 
she would smile covertly at Teddy, who stood in 
his English aloof way with what she called his 
“ church face ” on. “ Raoul, my little one — but 
we are so stiff ! ” and she would pull a face to 
mock at his expression. 

She embarrassed him by holding his hand as 
they walked down the Boulevards. She would 
kiss him good night and good morning; tease him, 
cry if he were cross, laugh if he smiled; call him 
a little cabbage, a bear, a darling, or in his own 
language, “ Mistaire Angleesh, very strecktique 
to nice French leddy.” 

She taught Teddy what no other person could 
have taught him: the value of a love that is like 
sunshine, as bright, as warm, as impersonal. She 
taught him that love was of more value than ap- 
pearances, that if you loved, as she did, the streets 
should glow with it, the passers-by be the better 
for it, that the people on the omnibuses should be 
a good and fitting audience for the great play. 

But for her companionship Teddy might never 
have grown up into a man. He might have re- 


The Fairy in the Cobweb 85 

mained the comfortable elderly youth England is 
so full of, playing games, shooting, hunting, and 
managing an estate; and beyond that almost in- 
credibly selfish. She taught him real chivalry, 
honesty of expression, and gave him one great 
gift, the gift by which all life is sweetened, a love 
for and knowledge of children. 

He did not ask himself if she were human, in- 
deed his first idea of her as a fairy remained, and 
the whole of his life was altered by her even until 
he was an old man, for then he remembered her 
and his youth, and his winter became spring 
again. 

Paris roared and rumbled about them. Its 
business, its politics, affairs, vices, and teeming 
eager life, flowed about them unceasingly, and 
never seemed to touch them. 

For Teddy and Monsieur Serge it was a world 
of old things, of books, prints, pictures, and furni- 
ture. A man bought a chair before dejeuner — 
so much the happier was that meal. The fads, 
the foibles of customers was their small talk; 
the sales, the possible bargains they made or lost 
their great affair. Teddy became expert; a figure 
at small sales, a personality on the Quais at the 
bookstalls, welcomed in the back streets where 
old, dingy shops, replicas of his own, yielded per- 
haps a bit of china or a print. 

It was an idyll in the heart of a city of realities. 

Picture to yourself the little sitting-room at 


86 


St. Quin 


dejeuner. The crowded walls full of coloured 
prints, silhouettes, bad oil-paintings, plates, draw- 
ings. Every shelf full of odds and ends; every 
cupboard ready to be sold, even a price on the 
chairs and table. A room where sale numbers 
predominated, stuck on frames and pieces of fur- 
niture. Serge, fat, jolly, dusty, with a pile of 
catalogues beside his plate. Teddy opening busi- 
ness letters. “ Monsieur Meaux desires to know 
if we have a nice mahogany dining-table ” 

Serge touches the table they are sitting at. 
“ The very thing — perfect. Absolutely. And for 
two hundred and fifty francs a bargain. Raoul, 
you see him to-day and it is as good as sold.” 

“Not our table?” from Henriette, who is 
bringing in a ragout of mutton. 

“ And why not? ” says Serge. “ And our chairs 
— even the glasses, or this salt-cellar, it is good 
this salt-cellar. Raoul, I have never noticed 
our salt-cellar; it should go in the window. In 
these times one should make all the money one 
can.” 

Mariette is balancing a piece of sardine on the 
nose of the cat. 

“ Malbroch,” she says, alluding to the cat, “ he 
shall go into the window and I myself will sell 
him. N’est-ce pas, Malbroch? Six hundred 
francs for this be-autiful cat. ‘ And why so 
much?’ the grand lady will say. And I shall 
answer, ‘ It is not a cat, it is an enchanted duke, 


The Fairy in the Cobweb 87 

much handsomer and nicer than the cross and 
ugly Raoul, who sent me away this morning.’ ” 

“ And if we put you in the window, my little 
sausage?” says Monsieur Serge. 

“ I shall draw all Paris,” she answers, as she 
makes a face at Teddy. “ I shall sit in that big 
chair we brought from Florence, in my new white 
dress, and I shall nod my head all day like a 
Chinaman, and the crowd will grow and grow 
and grow until a regiment cannot stop it. And 
then a great big rich man, much nicer than Raoul, 
shall come in his auto, and force this way and that 
through the crowd, and stare and stare and stare 
at me until at last he shall come into the shop 
and demand the price of me. And then papa will 
laugh and rub his hands and say . . . What will 
you say, mon pere? ” 

The voice of Monsieur Serge is tender. He 
puts his arm round his daughter’s neck and draws 
her to him, and says, “ She is my dear daughter 
whom I love. No gold could buy her, nothing 
shall tempt me because — because if she left me 
I should die.” 

“Oh, les enfants!” says Henriette, the privi- 
leged. 

“ Then,” whispers Mariette, “ you will not sell 
the salt-cellar, papa, mon cher — because I am sud- 
denly very fond of it.” 

And Teddy shakes his fist at her, and they all 
laugh, and so the meal continues. 


88 


St. Quin 

And so the days continue, until Teddy has but 
six months more of freedom. 

A month before Teddy left Paris Mariette 
died. She caught a chill one day walking in the 
rain in thin shoes and stockings, refused to nurse 
herself, pneumonia set in, and death laid his hand 
so lightly on her at the end that she scarcely 
seemed to die. 

It was very quiet, simple, and profound. The 
old priest at the bedside, Serge, Henriette, the 
candles, and Mariette whose eyes seemed big 
that they filled the room. Teddy saw nothing 
else. It was more like a bird suddenly stopping 
in full song than death. 

After the funeral, a very simple affair, old 
Serge locked himself in his room. The shutters 
of the shop were down; Henriette sobbed unceas- 
ingly in her tiny kitchen; and Teddy sat silent and 
thoughtful in his chair by the desk. His eyes saw 
something white under a chair in a far corner; 
his mouth became suddenly dry and his throat 
contracted. It was one of her handkerchiefs; it 
must have lain there for days during her illness. 
She had left her handkerchiefs about everywhere. 
“ Dear Raoul, you must not scold, but I have lost 
yet another of my nice new handkerchiefs.” The 
big cat sprang tiut of the darkness and landed, 
purring, on his knee. And so he sat until ten 
o’clock, when Henriette brought in a lamp. 

For days Serge avoided him, and then, one 


The Fairy in the Cobweb 89 

evening after dinner, he pointed silently to the 
shop, and they went in there, closing the door of 
the sitting-room behind them. 

Teddy, and he blessed himself for it all his 
days, spoke first. 

“ I must tell you,” he said, “ that I have to go 
back to England in three weeks. You do not 
know who I am, and I shall always thank you 
for taking me on trust. But now that I must go 
back I will tell you. My name is St. Quin, and 
I am quite a rich man, very rich, so that I am de- 
lighted to be able to ask you to accept my small 
share of the business ” — his voice became husky 
here — “ as a memory of our sweet Mariette.” 

Monsieur Serge sat for a long time without 
speaking. He seemed to rouse himself from a 
dream at last, and spoke slowly and in a broken 
voice. 

“ Monsieur St. Quin, I am a ruined man. For 
months past I have hoped to recover my fortune, 
but Fate is against me.” He raised his voice 
almost to a cry. “ Fate is against me. She takes 
my daughter, my friend, and my business. She 
leaves me only the river.” 

“You have spent the capital?” asked Teddy. 

“ Part I have spent, part has — has been lent 
to my cousin, who finds himself unable to pay. 
I am finished. There is left a few old sticks of 
furniture and a broken old man.” 

“The address of your cousin?” said Teddy 
quietly. 


90 


St. Quin 


“ You will not be hard? ” 

“ I shall be just.” 

It was a very stern-faced young Englishman 
who arrived at the rooms of Monsieur Julius; 
who marched later into a gay cafe and sat him- 
self down by the side of a well-dressed, weak- 
looking youth; — he knew Julius of old — who 
brought that young gentleman abruptly to his feet, 
to the door, and back to his rooms. 

Two hours later Teddy arrived, somewhat 
breathless, having thrashed Monsieur Julius, at 
the shop. Serge looked as if he had never moved. 

“ Here are a thousand francs to go on with,” 
he said, placing notes and gold in the silent man’s 
hand. “ In three weeks I will send more. I do 
not, as I said, give up my partnership. I remain 
always your partner on the condition you lend no 
more money. You will put over the door ‘ Serge 
and Raoul.’ I shall never forget. And now we 
must go to bed.” 

“ Serge and Raoul ” it remains to this day, a 
musty, dusty ,place, where musty, dusty men talk 
of old books and old furniture to a stout man 
with a mop of white hair. 

And over the place there is a dainty gossamer 
spirit, light of foot and quick of laughter, who 
moves among the cobwebs when Monsieur Serge 
drowses in his chair and fills his heart with 


memories. 


CHAPTER IX 
FETTER LANE 

Everyone knew that Master St. Quin was com- 
ing home. The news leaked from the morning- 
room of the big house by way of the housekeeper’s 
room to the kitchen; the cook told the head laun- 
dry maid, who told the dairy maid, who told Mrs. 
Willow at the farm, who told Mrs. Fuller and 
Mrs. Durnley, of Appleshot, who in their turn 
spread the news broadcast over the St. Quin do- 
main. “ What is history,” says Thoreau more or 
less in these words, “ but a number of old women 
gossiping under a hill?” 

Manwise it filtered through the mouth of Mas- 
ter Edmond’s own man, Scarlet, to the grooms, 
the gardeners, the stable boys, the golf caddies, 
the keepers of wood and stream, and so on until 
Mrs. Durnley, of Appledore, confronting her 
spouse with the intelligence, was met with the 
courteous reply of “ stale news.” Men gossip 
every bit as much as women. 

Travel in foreign parts was discussed between 
Mr. Roberts the butler, and Mr. Scarlet the gen- 
tleman’s gentleman. Mr. Scarlet, as being a trav- 

91 


92 


St. Quin 


elled man with a knowledge of the best hotels, 
drew lurid pictures of Paris and Berlin. Mr. 
Roberts retorted with a youthful experience of 
Switzerland, where he couldn’t abide the beer. 
The housekeeper, home-keeping soul, could not 
understand the value of foreign parts at all. 
“ There’s people and noise enough in London 
without crossing the ocean to find it,” was her 
verdict. 

The discussions nearly, but not quite, obliter- 
ated the nine days’ wonder of Miss Barbara’s 
wedding, the most serious blot the family had 
suffered for years. 

This affair, the throwing of a glove in the face 
of all St. Quin conventions, had been fully told 
in a letter from Barbara to Edmond, a letter that 
never reached him. She had, it appeared, a girl 
friend in London, a friend stamped and sealed as 
being of undoubted family in fine circumstances, 
and one in whom St. Quin could put absolute trust. 
But, being not only behind the times but blind to 
change into the bargain, St. Quin pere had never 
considered the possibility of this family becoming 
emancipated from its strict old-fashionedness. To 
him the Greenshaws, of Norfolk, were of the 
same unchanging order as the St. Quins. But 
the Greenshaws, like many others, had opened 
their door to art. Art, that is, as practised in its 
most Society form where that Society chose to 
patronise the new movement. 


Fetter Lane 


93 


The Greenshaws attended Sunday plays. One 
might meet actors, yes, and actresses, at their 
house. An artist, famous for his daringly deca- 
dent lack of drawing, had painted a portrait of 
Mrs. Greenshaw, said to be inspired and having 
a curious resemblance to an accident to an egg. 
Veronica Greenshaw, Barbara’s friend, had a 
black boudoir, and went in for people’s auras, 
Chinese poetry, and the latest kind of mysticism. 
She belonged to a set composed of people who 
thought the ugliness of crinolines and mid-Vic- 
torian ornaments enchanting; who said they 
liked plays without scenery; preferred consump- 
tive music, bloodless drawings, and who affected 
a great melancholy at the ill taste of their day. 
They had formed themselves into a club, of which 
no one paid their subscriptions, called The Cav- 
iare, and here they practised Bohemianism as a 
fine art. It was at The Caviare that Barbara met 
Hyacinth Venn. 

In part of her letter to Edmond Barbara had 
written : 

“ I don’t know if you will understand, or 
if anyone will, but I seem to have suddenly 
come out of the darkness into a glorious 
light. He is not what you’d call your 
‘ form,’ though he belongs to a very old Irish 
family (isn’t it snobbish of me to put that?). 
And everybody is certain he has a great 


94 


St. Quin 


future. I admit, Teddy, that I don’t under- 
stand his work, but I don’t mind because he 
is the man I love. You’ll think I’ve lost all 
shame, but love is so different to what I’d 
expected. I had thought it meant a bishop, 

‘ The Voice that breathed o’er Eden,’ a lot 
of people, and a heap of dresses, and then 
the sanctified boredom I’ve noticed among 
my married friends. 

“ We have three hundred a year, and we 
are gloriously happy. And, of course, I shall 
have heaps of money in time. I expect you 
will adopt the family attitude of polite com- 
miseration, and send me coals and blankets 
at Christmas, as you would to the poor. 

“ Father, of course, rushed up to town — 
after it was all over — found us at The Cav- 
iare, a club I belong to, having our wedding 
breakfast with a few awfully jolly people. 
Everybody behaved perfectly. I was very 
proud of father, as he looked extraordinarily 
handsome, and only gave us the family curse 
and two hundred pounds in a private room. 
When he gets over it he’s sure to allow me 
something, so that besides the two hundred 
I have of my own, and Hyacinth’s earnings 
(about a hundred a year, so far), we shall 
pull through. Mother won’t even write to 
me. Aunt Dawson (scarcely a relation) sent 
an unexpected cheque, and besides that we 


Fetter Lane 


95 

have had some dreadful paintings from Hya- 
cinth’s friends, useful things from the Green- 
shaws, and we think a manager is going to 
produce Hyacinth’s play, ‘ Liberty,’ at a 
matinee . You’d hate it; it’s all about poor 
people. 

“ I never knew I had a soul before, or an 
attitude, or an atmosphere, or that I looked 
early Italian, but they talk nothing else. But, 
Teddy dear, if you could bear it, do come 
and see me. I’m not one of the cranks, 
really — I’m only in love. And he doesn’t 
know yet that I’m steering out of this Mutual 
Admiration Society into the calmer waters 
of How to get on though Clever. 

“ Dear old thing, you’re so mysterious 
nowadays, do write to me.” 

But Edmond never received the letter, and so 
came home burdened with none but his own re- 
sponsibilities. And the manner of his coming was 
strange. 

He arrived on the high road at the point where 
one sees the whole valley of Rindle. Below him 
fields, farms, wood, villages lay bathed in the late 
afternoon sunlight. There was Rindlewood, there 
Appleshot, there Durlham, quiet, protected places 
set in orchards, watered by the Rindle, slumber- 
ing, gentle, prosperous. A lazy cart lumbered 
along a winding road; pheasants called from the 


96 St. Quin 

covers; labourers working at the harvest, the whir 
of the reaper, the clitter-clatter of the doctor’s 
dog-cart. 

Wood, spinney, river, field, and farm would 
be his. This little kingdom to order, guide, and 
control. It was in his blood. It was inevitable. 
The spirit of his forefathers haunted the place 
and haunted him. Yet he knew, as he looked 
down on it, that the hedges were as prison walls. 
To this ordered and quiet country he must give 
his life, his intelligence, his heart, when it came 
to him. He could see where he would be mar- 
ried, where buried, where live. His life’s pur- 
suits were before him, these his woods to shoot, 
these his waters to fish. A small patch, far away, 
was the Rindlewood cricket ground. At Apple- 
shot they held the flower shows. At Durlham, at 
the inn, they held the sheep-shearing suppers. In 
the distance a slight haze of smoke showed where 
Great Fenny was, and there he would sit on the 
bench. 

He sat on a milestone, a curious figure to be 
the heir to it all. He had exhausted all his ready 
money; had walked two hundred miles; was foot- 
sore, rather ragged, black with the sun, and wore 
his foreign-looking beard. 

Two sides of his nature waged war within him. 
This peace, this certainty held him one way; the 
road, adventure, romance drew him the other. 
He sat in judgment on himself, wondering. He 


Fetter Lane 


97 

had tasted the joys of freedom, the sting of pov- 
erty, the suffering of seeing a loved friend die. 
The world lay open to him, he could go back to 
old Serge, or find work abroad. And here were 
fetters, artfully fashioned, awaiting him, riches, 
possessions, a fine highway through life, punctu- 
ated by conventional milestones. He would marry 
just such an one to understand this life of ease. 
They would probably have children, boys who 
would go through the same mill of Eton and Ox- 
ford, girls to be presented at Court and married 
well. He would grow gently older, sleep over the 
newspaper, give up port after dinner, grow prosy, 
and die in the bed where he was born. 

As the afternoon waned and the sun sank, 
gilding the sky, so the old place claimed him for 
her own. The love such a man has for land, for 
odd bends of a river, for this and that clump of 
trees, for remembered sights and sounds stole 
back into his heart. 

He thought of Mariette, and it stirred in him 
an idea that perhaps one need not be so prosy and 
ordinary in such a place. She would have loved 
it, that fairy child, and would have seen fanciful 
things to do here and there. 

After all, he was young yet, and his father not 
so old; he had time; he could live a good deal of 
his time in London; he might meet some woman 
who would make his life happy. 

The very quietness of the place soothed all his 


St. Quin 


98 

senses. The lines of cows moving across to the 
farm dairies; the farmers on stout ponies taking 
last looks round; the carrier returning from Great 
Fenny after market day: yes, it was market day 
— Tuesday. Curious how he had forgotten these 
things. 

He would wait, he thought, until dark before 
he walked to the house, and then go in by a back 
way and up to his room unobserved, he hoped, 
and there change. How long was it since he had 
dressed for dinner? He had forgotten. 

He had only to ring a bell to set all the con- 
trivances of civilisation moving. A man would 
come and dress him. There would be a warm 
bath ready in no time, in the bathroom, the win- 
dow of which looked over the herb garden where 
the maids dried sheets and things on the great 
lavender hedges. And his shirt would be ready, 
and his clean socks; everything would be comfor- 
table in this prison. When he came back from 
his bath Mrs. Marshall, or whoever was the 
housekeeper, would have put vases of flowers in 
his room. He could remember the smell of cedar 
there was in the room, because the old powder 
cupboard was of cedar wood, as were the panels 
of the room also. 

There was nothing now in the sky but an ever- 
deepening, ever-mellowing glow, and the land- 
scape was merging into quieter harmonies, de- 
tails were lost, the trees seemed to sleep, the river 


Fetter Lane 


99 

to run more slowly. At last, as he watched, the 
light changed; it was twilight, and the world was 
very still. He remembered once watching a land- 
scape smoothed, as it were, by the approach of 
night. He was with Mariette, and she had said 
as the scene became more quiet and more still, 
rounded in big masses, “ Quelquefois le bon Dieu 
est tres simple .” 

He knew he had come home. 

It is easy to prophesy on certainties. 

Edmond arrived in his room unseen, rang the 
bell, and thought he had obliterated five years’ 
independence in the act. 

The man Scarlet entered the room, and, find- 
ing before him a brown-bearded stranger, thought 
for one instant that a burglar had broken into 
the house. 

But burglars do not ring bells and summon 
shaving water. 

“ Master Edmond! ” 

“ Tell my father I have come home. Get a 
hot bath ready. Find me a razor. Bring me an 
evening paper, some cigarettes, and have these 
rags thrown away.” 

“ I hope you are well, sir? ” 

“ Perfectly.” 

The man left the room. 

It was all so simple. One threw off the rags 
of adventure and stepped deliberately into the 


[IOO 


St. Quin 


prison uniform of Society. One commanded serv- 
ants, they obeyed. One said “ Hot water,” and 
the resources of civilisation turned on a stream- 
ing fountain, already hot, into a porcelain bath. 

Shaving the beard is no pleasant process, but 
it removes the dust of travel and the dust of the 
mind. One looks at oneself one moment in the 
glass, a bearded barbarian — comes soap, scissors, 
comes the cool, wet edge of a razor, and houp-la ! 
there is reflected a face in a state of grace and 
lather. A man as his fellowmen. 

A cigarette — not a Caporal — and a glance at 
the evening paper in the bath smacks a little of 
Bohemian tendencies, but in a few moments the 
pores of the mind open and one is in touch with 
all that makes life practical. Here, for example, 
are the cricket averages, the advertisements of 
plays, and of new novels: conversation to hand. 
A man might pass muster for weeks with his stray 
information and no one recognise him for a poet 
at heart. The Mikado of Japan is dead — well, 
long life to the Mikado. 

By the time Edmond was dressed he was in, 
what his father would call, his right mind. 

A knock at the door. 

“ Glad to have you back, my boy.” 

Where, now, was the tramp, the vagrant, the 
guide to Italian Palaces, the second-hand dealer? 
Gone where the waste paper goes? Or, sobering 
thought, was he back in the old familiar prison 


Fetter Lane 


IOI 


reserved for extra first-class prisoners caught af- 
ter straying from Society? 

The last dinner he had sat down to comfortably 
was with old Serge in the back room of a little 
restaurant in the Boulevard St. Germain. The 
ghost of the dear Mariette had sat with them. 
And now what ghost was at the table? One, 
surely, whom no one mentioned. One? there were 
two : the ghost of himself, as he had last sat there, 
a soap-fresh young man, with no great mind be- 
yond his muscles, and the ghost of his sister 
Barbara. 

“Where is Barbara?” 

The silent servants hung upon the answer. 

“ We must tell you about Barbara later,” said 
his mother. “ Now tell us about yourself. Was 
Italy pleasant? ” 

There is a direct answer to all those generalis- 
ing questions, and he had not forgotten it. 

“ Italy was charming.” 

The ages-old olives, the groves of oranges/ the 
lemon gardens; grim ghosts of Caesars, of Medici, 
of Pope and passionate peasant; voices of night- 
ingales, and thrumming of old songs: Italy — 
charming! Polite conversation is the epitome of 
insult. 

“ I have not been in Paris since ’80,” said his 
mother. “ I have always been very fond of 
Paris; the Louvre, and the beautiful gardens. But 
hotel life is very tiring.” 


102 


St. Quin 


“ Very,” said Edmond. 

“ Such a noise,” said his mother. “ Such a 
coming and going. And there is always a bother 
about the bath. Did you find that in Italy? ” 

“ They are a little behind the times,” he an- 
swered. 

But, his heart answered, what times are behind 
them? 

When the servants had left the room, she rose 
and, with a little apologetic smile to her husband, 
came over to Edmond and kissed him fondly. 
Education and environment had supplied her with 
no words for the occasion, but the pressure of 
her lips spoke. She loved her son and couldn’t 
say so. One doesn’t. At least, so that dinner- 
table said. It is easy to pretend there are no 
such things as elephants in England if one avoids 
the zoological gardens, circuses, or music-halls — 
so, also, is it easy to pretend that life swings on 
from one evening newspaper to another, leaving 
nothing behind but a crumpled affair forgotten 
in the waste-paper basket. 

And yet there sat the son, heir, and hope of 
the family, drinking better coffee than he had ever 
had in Paris or Vienna, and talking, as from a 
book, about the disgraceful Acts of the present 
Government. 

The man brought round the cigars and placed 
a little lighted spirit lamp by Edmond’s dessert 
plate, and poured out a glass of old brandy. The 


Fetter Lane 


103 

entire act, if valued, costing about twelve shill- 
ings — a difficult and elaborate sum to work out. 
Edmond, subconsciously, did work it out. It had 
only just recently meant about four meals to him, 
and the contrast was a little surprising. 

In the course of his wanderings Edmond had 
met with that little imp, Humour, and had given 
him lodging and fed him with morsels of daily 
life, but none so delicious as the feast he was 
having now. The Spirit of Comedy lingered, 
loth to leave the room. He was supposed to 
have made the Grand Tour, part of every gentle- 
man’s education, and to have acquired that sense 
of foreign travel and breadth of view such tours 
give. His mother, dear soul, thought he had 
walked through a catalogue, and he had swal- 
lowed the world and had washed it down with 
the waters of bitterness. But there was also the 
inestimable gift of Mariette. 

How strange it would have been if he had 
spoken the Truth. 

But it would have been still more strange to 
him if his mother had opened all that lay buried 
in her heart. 

Mrs. St. Quin, who smelt faintly of Russia 
leather, left the room after the cigars were lit. 
Then St. Quin spoke. 

“ It has made a man of you, my boy. How- 
ever, we don’t speak of that. Now about Bar- 
bara. n 


104 St. Quin 

Then, of course, the whole disgraceful story 
came out. 

Edmond only once interrupted. “ She loves 
him, I suppose? ” 

To his surprise the words brought down on 
him the basis of his father’s philosophy. “ What 
has love to do with marriage? ” 

“ But surely ” 

“ Love,” said his father, leaning across the 
table and emphasising his points with his forefin- 
ger, u is part of the same disease as youth, i vT r od- 
ernity has ridiculously overcultivated a cult for 
love that threatens to overwhelm Society. Mar- 
riage, with us, is an obligation to the State. It 
is the natural outcome of man and woman wish- 
ing to perpetuate their families. Falling in love 
is utterly unreasonable. It may be that dances, 
hot rooms, good dinners, and the scent of flowers 
make the reason drunk. Rather pleasantly drunk, 
I’ll admit. But I think you will agree that, given 
the proper circumstances, almost any young man 
will fall in love, as he calls it, with any young 
woman. If they all married on that feeling the 
country would go to pieces. Good heavens, my 
boy, you can’t turn England into an Agapemone.” 

“ But,” said Edmond, “ if love isn’t the reason 
for marriage, at least it’s an excuse for it.” 

“ Stuff and nonsense,” replied his father. 
“ The kind of love that makes marriages happy 
comes with marriage. You don’t kiss your wife 


Fetter Lane 


105 

all your life, you’ve got to meet her at breakfast.” 

“ But Barbara ” Edmond began, feeling 

vaguely uncomfortable. 

“ Barbara has disgraced the family by marry- 
ing a man who writes modern drivel for modern 
drivellers. I have had the misfortune to read 
a few of what are called ‘ advanced books.’ They 
are not advanced in the least, but the work of 
the devil. It may be very clever to be unintel- 
ligible, but it’s not amusing.” 

“ Perhaps he has a future.” 

“ Everyone has a future,” said St. Quin, with- 
out the least idea of being humorous, “ but very 
few of these loose, artistic people have a past. 
Now we ” 

“ Are the St. Quins.” 

“ That is the answer in a nutshell. If we were 
the Browns she could marry whom she liked. 
But we are not. She’s hurt and grieved me bit- 
terly. It isn’t as if we had another daughter.” 

“ Has he any people? ” 

“ Everyone has people, few people have fam- 
ily. I believe he claims relation with an Irish 
family. Well, I distrust Irish people. I distrust 
all Celtic people. Nowadays everyone who wants 
to excuse an immoral life pleads Celtic blood. 
Thank God, I’m Saxon.” 

“ I suppose he thanks God he’s Irish.” 

“ He may, or he may not. Here is Barbara; 
Mrs. Venn she calls herself.” 


io6 


St. Quin 

“ I suppose she is Mrs. Venn, then,” said Ed- 
mond. 

“ Oh, yes, yes,” said his father testily. “ And 
I shall have to give her an allowance. I believe 
he has written some absurd play about the Middle 
Classes, which an utterly unheard-of paper has 
said is a work of genius. People use the word 
genius to-day so often that it has come to mean 
nothing. The age exasperates me, it’s all second- 
rate. Anyhow, my boy, you are left to us.” 

“You talk as if Babs was dead,” said Ed- 
mond. 

“ Socially she is — at least, so far as I am con- 
cerned.” 

“ But surely, nowadays, people are not so 
. . .” He paused, searching for a word. 

“ We are particular,” said his father, filling in 
the gap. “ There are still ladies and gentlemen 
in the world who realise what is due to their po- 
sition. I absolutely refuse to know, or counte- 
nance a lot of loose, artistic people. Your sister 
can come here, of course. I’m not the kind of 
man to turn melodramatic and tell her never to 
darken my doors again, but you must understand 
that the man she calls her husband does not come 
here.” 

Then Edmond suddenly flared up, not violent- 
ly, but with a storm raging in his heart against 
such starched-shirt philosophy as his father’s. 

“ Father,” he said, “ isn’t it rather, what shall 


Fetter Lane 


107 

I say — well, narrow, to put the claims of a fam- 
ily before the claims of two people who have 
suddenly discovered that the world is made of 
roses, who feel, and are, King and Queen in a 
country all their own, who have abolished all con- 
ventions by one magnificent step? Why not act 
from your heart and ask them down at once, and 
be proud of their glorious humanity? Isn’t it 
rather little of us to think ourselves so big? ” 

“ She has made her choice,” said his father. 

“ They might have committed some crime,” 
said Edmond. 

“ In my eyes, in the eyes of our world, she ha f 
been guilty of a breach of Taste. We do not 
propose to upset all the value of the Society we 
belong to for the sake of a silly girl. You will 
agree with me when you have been home longer, 
at present you have the feeling of liberty strongly 
on you. I must tell you, my boy, that there is 
no such thing as liberty. We are none of us free. 
Here am I, master of this property, as much a 
prisoner of conscience as you are. I owe a duty 
to this house, this estate, and to the family hon- 
our: call it ancestor-worship if you like, there it 
is. Now, shall we join your mother? ” 

A prisoner, yes, that is what he was. He sat 
in his bedroom thinking of this, looking at him- 
self in the glass to see the effect of his dress 
clothes, his newly shaven face, and the deep brown 


io8 


St. Quin 


of his skin where the sun had burned it. That 
remained of the road, the adventure, the free- 
dom, that browned skin where sun and wind had 
made their mark. And now he was to be a 
dress-suit person with a neat and tidy mind all 
arranged by rule. 

Was that all that remained? Who steals into 
his room? A shimmering fairy form, a ghost 
with smiling eyes and quick, neat, tender move- 
ments. And it stands before the cheval glass and 
blots out the reflection, and says, “ Mon cher , 
Raoul, we go to London to-morrow and we say 
— I go to buy myself some clothes at the tailor’s 
— and we go so quickly to the sister’s house, and 
we know the address, because the housekeeper 
has had to post parcels there, and we go in, and 
we say — we say: ‘ If you are happy, what’s the 
odds.’ ” 

Then the prisoner undressed, which you can 
do before ghosts, and smiled as he blew out his 
candle and said to himself, “ Dear little Mariette, 
of course I shall go to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER X 
PARADISE ALLEY 

There are streets that seem to have no souls. 
They seem to be full of cats and lamp-posts. 
They have a blank look all down one side of the 
street, and a blank look all down the other. And 
they are always numbered with odd numbers on 
one side and even on the other, and the house 
you want is always at the other end of the street. 
They take no interest in life, and seem to collect 
more dust, stray bits of paper, and crying chil- 
dren than any other street for miles. And they 
were built at the worst time, in about i860, by 
some architect who had never been in love, or the 
country, and who said to himself, “ Life is hide- 
ous, it is as hideous as any street.” Indeed other 
streets seem ashamed to lead into it, so that it 
is one long dreary highway, with a perspective 
of dirty windows and dingy doors and coal-holes 
in the pavement. Not even a red pillar-box re- 
lieves it. Here and there some person who hated 
flowers has had the awful idea of planting them 
in window-boxes in that street in order to watch 
them die. 

At one end of the street there is a small square 
109 


no 


S.t. Quin 


with a square garden in it full of despairing trees, 
and surrounded by rusty railings, and carefully 
locked by ugly gates. It is the gathering-place 
of the world’s soot and smuts, and is owned, ap- 
parently, by a cat with a criminal face and moth- 
eaten fur. There are brass plates on some of the 
doors in the square to inform you that here 
Madame Trevoile may be found and here she 
has “ robes and modes.” And you look up at the 
windows of this establishment and see a very 
tired fern with a moulting bird hung over it and 
encouraged to sing and be jolly by a mess of dead 
groundsel. And two flyblown fashion-plates are 
in the window, the one representing a lady of 
enormous wealth accepting a fur motor-coat from 
the hands of a servant; the other, showing a most 
dashing party of ladies in daring evening gowns 
chatting to a palm. 

The other end of this street leads into another 
street of the same nature, so that it appears that 
despair hedges the place in. 

The people condemned to live in this street 
and in the square command children to “ Come 
in ” from top windows. And their voices leave 
no charm or lilt, but are just voices. 

And one sees, again by an unpolished brass 
plate, that here a Professor teaches singing, the 
violin, the banjo, the saxophone, and the piano. 
No one in the street has ever known the Pro- 
fessor to have a pupil. 


Ill 


Paradise Alley 

Higher up is another plate which sets forth 
that this house is actually an Academy of Danc- 
ing. Of Dancing! Of light, airy grace, the swirl 
of skirts, the slow and languorous sway of hips, 
the abandonment of limbs to glorious music, the 
passionate surrender to love-haunted sounds. 
And who is this flat-footed creature departing 
with an air of sullen secrecy? Is it a pupil! In- 
deed it is. 

It takes hold of the imagination, does this 
street, because it appears to have no history. No 
murder could be committed there, no fire burn 
the houses, no great poet occupy, all unknown, 
a garret there and sing his soul out to the stars. 

It advertises here and there for lodgers. Board 
and Residence: or Apartments for Single Men. 

The domestics who make a feint of cleaning 
the doorsteps and a very decided occupation of 
flirting with milkmen would of themselves deter 
all but the soulless from boarding or lodging 
there. But they do have lodgers, and punctually 
every morning the doors are opened and sombre 
people hurry to their work; and punctually every 
night they return carrying evening papers and are 
swallowed up by these forbidding houses. 

Some houses have as many as six little door 
bells, each having a legend below them suggest- 
ing that Mr. So-and-so may be found here. One 
would expect Mr. So-and-so to be found hanging 
by the neck in an upper room. 


1 12 


St. Quin 


It is said that a country woman once came 
here to cry “ Sweet Lavender ” in the streets for 
sale, and became so depressed that she fled Lon- 
don and lived in the depths of the country ever 
afterwards and could not bear the sight or smell 
of lavender for many a day. 

And yet, do you know, Barbara and Hyacinth 
lived in that street in the corner house overlook- 
ing the square, and they boasted — actually boasted 
— of its beauties. 

Edmond, fresh from his tailor’s, and walking 
swiftly, turned into the street, stopped, gazed at 
the name painted on the last corner house, Car- 
thar Street, and then looked at the number of 
the nearest house. 

He had lunched at the Savoy, been to his 
tailor’s, had bought a new cigarette-case, and had 
a cheque for a hundred pounds in his pocket, and 
he decided at once that he had made some mis- 
take. It amounted to the feeling, “ Of course, no 
one lives here.” So he retraced his steps until 
he found a policeman and asked if there was not 
some other Carthar Street in that neighbourhood. 

“What number do you want?” said the con- 
stable. 

“ I want forty-six, but it can’t be the right 
street.” 

“ End house' on the right,” said the constable. 
“ Party not long moved in.” 

There was nothing f.or it but to go back and 


Paradise Alley 1 13 

attack the street again. Owing to the fact that 
a small child had upset a smaller child out of a 
perambulator and was being spanked in public 
for it, Edmond was even less taken with the street 
than before. But with mingled feelings of nau- 
sea and surprise he walked the length of the 
street towards the square and found that there 
was no such number as forty-six. He stood won- 
dering what to do when a window was thrust 
open in number forty-four and a charming lady 
in a careless toilette informed him that forty-six 
was round the corner. It would be. 

“ You’ll know me next time, won’t yer? ” said 
the angel of brightness, slamming down the win- 
dow. For Edmond had been unconsciously star- 
ing. His father’s point of view came vividly 
home. 

And then he turned the corner. 

He suddenly realised that if one took one of 
these houses, and petted it, and treated it affec- 
tionately and painted it white and gave it a green 
door and railings, and clean curtains and pots of 
geraniums in the windows, and a beautiful shiny 
brass knocker to the door, it could be a very dif- 
ferent matter. It was a bride among houses, but 
it had married into the wrong family. So Ed- 
mond thought and was still more impressed by 
his father’s point of view. 

The evil cat who lorded it over the square 
garden knew that the white paint and the shin- 


XI 4 


St. Quin 


ing windows and the nice clean door would very 
soon get very dirty, and was pleased to think so 
because at present the house was a reproach to 
the square. However, Edmond knocked and 
rang. There was a polite message in brass under 
the knocker to ask him to do so. So he did. 

A pleasant-faced woman of forty odd opened 
the door and beamed on him. She was Irish and 
delighted to see everybody. 

Was Mrs. Venn at home? Indeed she was, 
and Mr. Venn himself. 

Would he please walk up. 

Barbara threw herself into his arms. “ Teddy ! 
Teddy, you funny old soul, I am glad you’ve 
come. This is Hyacinth.” 

The two men shook hands. The atmosphere 
was right, something waved a magic wand and 
in a moment they were all talking and laughing. 

He must be shown the house from tip to toe. 
They invaded the kitchen to Mary’s entire de- 
light. They saw the coal-cellar. They threw 
open the dining-room door and stood still to wait 
for Edmond’s exclamation of delight. He ex- 
claimed. Then Mary pulled him out of that and 
up the stairs to the top of the house. Three 
rooms knocked into one — the study. “ And here 
he writes,” said Barbara. 

They loved the street. It was so quiet. And 
the square garden with beautiful trees and an 
adorable but difficult-of-approach cat! And it 


Paradise Alley 115 

was so quaint to be living in a kind of backwater. 
And one never knew such people existed. And 
she was frightfully sorry about the fuss at home 
(which caused Hyacinth to frown), but after all 
it was her life, wasn’t it? And so on, and so 
on, and so on. 

These, thought Edmond, are Mariette’s peo- 
ple; she could have been happy here, while he 
felt just a little out of place. Why? 

They were surrounded by evidences of a small 
society with a tang of the Caviare Club. Little, 
rather meaningless, sketches hung on the walls. 
The china was a little obtrusively artistic. The 
books on the tables were principally by small 
playwrights, infinitesimal poets, and very young 
novelists. There was an atmosphere as of things 
being taken up and dropped. An obtrusively new 
set of Meredith adorned the bookcase. There 
was in the place of honour a picture of a lady 
disrobing in a fog. The very good Chippendale 
chair stood in melancholy dignity next to a small 
black sofa. The flowers were a little precious. 

That was the word his mind had been search- 
ing for, it was all a little precious, a little over- 
strained in trying to make the best things better. 

To Edmond this atmosphere was rather dis- 
tressing. His mind breathed with difficulty. He 
had, on one side of him, the solid good taste of 
the St. Quin house; on the other, the vast ex- 
perience of the grandeurs of Italy, of the master- 


ii6 


St. Quin 


pieces of the Louvre, and he had a feeling that 
a good deal of this half-way house between Bo- 
hemia and Convention smacked a little of artistic 
vulgarity. One could be too refined. 

He was not old enough to recognise the beau- 
ties in this waste ground of the Arts; or the pos- 
sibilities; or to realise that the Radical of one 
generation could be the Conservative of the next. 

But their glorious happiness surmounted and 
overcame the slight decadence of their surround- 
ings. It was a delight to watch them, to see 
their sudden intimate glances, to feel the very 
presence of Love in the room. 

He wondered, with that odd twist of his, if 
Love ever got confused in his different surround- 
ings. In palaces rather cold, in cottages snug and 
cosy, in streets like Carthar Street a little de- 
pressed. And then he knew he was wrong. Love 
was the same cheerful, rosy, brilliant child every- 
where, and when he left the house and turned 
again into the dismal street Love had changed 
it all. 

The street, he knew now, held all the world’s 
possibilities: Romance, Adventure, Song, Love. 
Behind the dingy curtains and dusty blinds peo- 
ple lived who loved and bore children and loved 
the stars. And jfhe sun, now setting in a rose- 
coloured fury, lit the dirty windows, so that they 
shone like rubies and threw a soft flush over the 
pavements, and stirred the trees in the square 
into golden green beauty. 


Paradise Alley 117 

And who is this adorable child of seventeen 
coming out of the Academy of Dancing, treading 
as if on air? Is it a pupil? Yes, indeed it is. 

The “ little present for you ” is open on the 
table. “ A hundred pounds 1 ” says Barbara, and 
kisses the cheque. 

As for Edmond, he gave a shilling to a man 
who was making the flimsiest pretence at selling 
collar-studs. And he gave it without being asked. 


CHAPTER XI 


LOVE-SCENES A LA MODE 

Take it that a master-hand painted a series of 
fans to set forth The Correct Man’s Progress. 
They are set forth as by Hogarth with multiplic- 
ity of detail, moral, and elegance. The first 
fan shows his own particular room, thereby fur- 
nishing a clue to the whole. It conveys, first of 
all, a very masculine spirit, together with the 
aroma of good tobacco. You notice upon the 
walls several photographs of cricket groups, row- 
ing groups, and groups taken in the early morn- 
ing after dances. The young gentleman’s mother 
and father, looking a little old-fashioned, are set 
out in frames hanging above a pipe-rack. There 
is a much-worn, comfortable leather arm-chair, a 
rumpled rug, and open window, and a mantel- 
piece so crowded that the painting of the nu- 
merous objects is masterly. Pens, pipe-knives and 
cleaners, golf balls, invitation cards for events 
long past, brass candle-sticks, a mirror, and odd 
bits of fishing-tackle. Over the mirror is an oar 
suspended, having painted on its blade the names 
of a victorious crew. Three cricket bats rest in 
a corner, together with a bag of golf clubs, sev- 
-u8 


Love-scenes a la Mode 119 

eral fishing-rods in brown linen cases, and a hunt- 
ing-crop. There is a dog’s collar lying on a chair, 
and a book on fencing on a desk. 

Letters, bills, advertisements, and all manner 
of untidy papers and envelopes litter the desk. 
A low bookshelf contains a number of odd vol- 
umes of country history: tales of travel and ad- 
venture, guide books, standard books on sport, 
and racing calendars. 

The room is empty, suitably enough, in order 
to show that the young gentleman is, as usual, 
out of doors. He is probably engaged in one or 
the other methods of harassing wild animals, and 
may be smashing at rats with a piece of wood 
in the straw stacks, or, if he is older, he is per- 
chance lying in wait to shoot at a deer. 

The second fan gives one the outside of the 
house, the park, its velvet spaces and great an- 
cient trees. It shows us figures in white lounging 
in deep chairs round a sumptuous tea-table. The 
figures are long, athletic, with thin brown faces 
and a great composure of manner. A liveried 
servant is crossing the lawn carrying a second re- 
lay of hot tea-cakes — the artist having shown us 
the first plate empty by the cups. 

There is a certain insolent feeling of ease and 
well-being about the whole picture, a certain set 
poise and degree about the young men and women 
who are all so exactly alike that they might be 
taken for brothers and sisters. 


120 


St. Quin 


In other fans of this series we are shown the 
best club, the bench of magistrates, correctly gay 
scenes in supper-rooms; the opening of a bottle 
of magnificent port on a great occasion, the deck 
of a racing-yacht, the grand stand at Ascot, and 
a picture of two gentlemen faultlessly dressed, 
sitting outside a cafe sipping weak whisky and 
soda-water, which picture we take to be repre- 
sentative of life in Paris. 

If a woman appears on a fan she is either some- 
body’s mother or somebody’s sister from her like- 
ness to everybody else. Never any dark, alluring, 
fascinating creature possessed of temperament, 
or wearing rather daring clothes. 

The last few of the series are the more im- 
portant, for they show The Correct Man pre- 
paring to unite himself to the Correct Young 
Woman. 

In this orderly and decent arrangement of life 
there is no sudden and ugly passion, no fling of 
caps over windmills, no abnormal disaster, no 
shipwreck of homes, or elopements, or hasty, ill- 
considered marriages. It is as smooth and reg- 
ular as is the sowing, reaping, stacking, and 
threshing of crops. And in consequence the pic- 
tures are quiet and harmonious and intensely well- 
bred and harmless. Indeed, no lady reaching 
down one of these fans could fan herself into a 
passion. They are safe and they are English, 
and they could be put into the hands of the Young 


Love-scenes a la Mode 121 

Person. And they give one the feeling of an 
atmosphere of absolute and blameless security, 
and have for motto, “ What we do is the right 
thing.” 

Then love-scenes start with a fan on which 
there is but a single figure. It is a figure of Cupid 
decently garmented, with his rosy wings dipt, 
and an expression, admirably painted, of grave 
calculation on his face. This is but natural, see- 
ing that he holds a pair of scales in one hand and 
is balancing one income and prospects as against 
another income and prospects, and is just turn- 
ing the balance ever so little by placing in one 
scale a somewhat long pedigree of a noble fam- 
ily. Behind him is a map of America on which 
is stamped an English coronet. And beside him, 
on an elaborate, lace-edged pin-cushion two hearts 
are carelessly pinned. 

The remaining fans show “ The First Meet- 
ing,” at a Society function and under the noses 
of chaperons, guardians, and parents; then comes 
“ Visit to the Parents”; then “The Discreet 
Kiss”; after that come a pair of fans showing 
parents discussing ways and means; and then 
“ Visit to the Lawyer ” ; then a number that show 
the man at his tailor’s, informing his friends, 
talking to Society reporters, being photographed, 
and finally being married. That completes the 
set. 

Anyone will notice that several of the fans 


122 


St. Quin 

have either been suppressed or lost. At least, 
judging from the studied care and delicacy of 
the artist one would say that he must have painted 
at least four others, as those remaining admit of 
no sudden yielding to human frailty, no sudden, 
thrilling, tremendous love at first sight, no pas- 
sionate farewell to one unsuitable either in rank, 
station, or income. It is all as neat and ordered 
as the way to the grave, as innocent and regular 
as daisies in a field; a poem written by a tailor, 
inspired by a hatter, and only read by the upper 
servants. 

It is a deliberate, callous Court of Honour, 
where the judge has given out a Sentence of Mar- 
riage. 

Perhaps one cannot paint the inner life upon 
a fan. 

Albeit thus Edmond read the world. He was 
under a Sentence of Marriage, and he behaved 
with the uttermost correctness even to the day 
when his mother said in her gentle way, “ Isn’t 
Felicity a sweet girl?” 

It was, as one says, in the air. He felt it. 
But he had not known how close upon him it was 
until, one day, he knew he had been marked down, 
priced, and as good as sold in the Marriage Mar- 
ket. Or was it Felicity who was being sold? 

A tremendous force propelled him, an equally 
tremendous force propelled her. Yet the force 
was so gently and skilfully used that they found 


Love-scenes a la Mode 123 

themselves in each other’s arms with only the 
sensation of a slight shock. 

She was of an age to marry: so was he. Her 
income doubled his. He had health, a clean rec- 
ord, and was well enough looking. And she was 
a sweet girl. His mother said so. Her mother 
said so. His father said “ go in and win.” Her 
father praised him to her face. Edmond “ went 
in and won.” It was a confoundedly easy vic- 
tory. One puppet became engaged to the other. 

It was a silver night of stars. The world 
shimmered in an exquisite night, made for love. 
The trees held secrets sleeping under the shad- 
ows of their leaves. Lights from the houses 
showed roses curled asleep, tobacco flowers awake 
starring the air with white loveliness and throb- 
bing the air with sweet, delicious scent. Bats 
wheeled swiftly by the lights. Cockchafers 
droned, hit trees with a phut and fell upon their 
backs. 

There was nothing of sorrow in the night, but 
that sweet melancholy that haunts all deep beauty. 

She, in white and very pale herself, walked 
by him on the lawn. 

They knew eyes followed them. They knew 
that the steps they took now into the dark were 
steps, fateful and tremendous, into the dark of 
life. 

Something stopped him from lighting a cigar- 
ette; a certain magic in the air, or in himself, or 


St. Quin 


124 

her. He did not know how swiftly her heart 
was beating, for his own drowned all sounds. 
And she was near, so near to him it seemed the 
world was full of her. 

And she was very beautiful. Like a rose. 
Creamy and big and strong and very desirable. 

He made some . perfectly stupid remark, to 
which she gave a fashionable answer. 

And so they wandered into the shadows. Was 
it to hide their faces, because they dared not 
look at one another? Is this love? Or is it part 
of a night of stars and shimmering light? 

How young, how pitiful they were. And the 
earth, Mother Earth, prompted them. 

He did not know, her, except as she appeared 
in the fashionable show-case, behind the plate- 
glass of charming manners. And he was to break- 
fast with her. 

He did not know if she had ever thought, or 
read, or sinned, or lived. She was as distant 
from him as a gold-fish. And yet she was so 
near, so fragrant, so feminine that his arms 
ached to hold her. 

The night closed them in. He tried to speak 
of a chair under the trees in a casual voice. 

Love made the chair a throne. 

How long they remained silent neither of them 
knew. Night does strange things, it makes plain 
men poets and ordinary girls goddesses. 

The air was warm and full of scent, drowsy 


Love-scenes a la Mode 125 

yet full of the sense of growing things. It was 
that very sense that moved them so that they 
dared not speak or stir. 

His hand touched hers, and with that touch 
all but her, the body of her, the hair, the eyes, 
the life of her, seemed naught. It was not night; 
it was eternity. 

She leaned a little towards him, as drunk as 
he with the palpitating emotion of a sense as of 
voices bidding them yield. 

Was this love? He did not pause to ask. 
Something beyond himself took hold on him, so 
that he became a wild, primitive man. 

She was afraid. 

He held her hand, and so they sat a while, 
waiting. It was as if the whole world waited 
the coming of love, of some voice to break the 
barrier; as if a river listened for the flood; as 
if the stars stood still, and a mighty spell was on 
the trees and flowers, in the shadows, in the sky. 

She trembled and stood up, releasing her hand. 

How young they were! 

And then a tumult swept him. Passion like a 
storm thrilled him, thrilled her. He took a step 
forward, held out his hands for one instant, and 
then crushed her in his arms and crushed his 
mouth to hers. 

It was no timid yielding, but nature giving to 
nature what Nature demanded. 


126 


St. Quin 


They returned to the house weary but exul- 
tant, and his mother, seeing them, came quickly, 
and before he had time to speak said, “ Bless 
you, my boy — my dear boy and dear girl. I am 
so glad.” 

Then it was made quickly known to the house- 
party, who ceased to dance and to play billiards 
and came forward even from bridge-tables, and 
made speeches, saying how lucky he was, and 
how pleased they were, and how beautiful was 
young love. And somehow they made it banal 
and conventional, just as if people fell in love 
every day. 

This scene might have been painted on a fan. 
But the other — the other was whispered by the 
night breeze when he kissed the rose. 


CHAPTER XII 
FELICITY 


Her name was Swan. Her other names Felicity 
Angela Dorrington, and she had been christened 
in great state with a Royal personage for god- 
mother. And she had been in love and out of it 
four times, not counting schoolboys. 

She has been described as a rose without a 
thorn, and there is some little sense in the de- 
scription as, casually observed, she seemed to 
have beauty and no character. 

She was deliciously fresh, fair, and big, with 
a face suggesting a sense of humour, and no- 
body seemed to have discovered the fact that 
she was at least two people. She was the per- 
fectly manicured-minded proper English girl who 
did everything everybody else did; who was a 
perfect mate for a regular nice sporting man who 
also did everything everybody else did. She could 
ride with him, play bridge, or tennis, or the piano. 
Her dressmaker was as good as his tailor, and 
they would both always have the correct clothes 
for everything. And that does make such a dif- 
ference. 


127 


128 


St. Quin 


She had gone through twenty-one years of the 
world with an immense deal of luggage. Her 
education demanded luggage. When she went to 
a country house she had to take clothes to ride 
in, play golf in, play tennis in, and swim in, in 
case there might be swimming. She had clothes 
to get up in and go to bed in, or to be ill in. She 
had dressing-jackets and gowns and night-caps 
and bath-gowns, and she had morning dresses and 
afternoon dresses and tea-gowns and bridge jack- 
ets and evening gowns. In fact, she had so many 
clothes that it took up the active life of a very 
strong maid looking after them. 

She looked beautiful in all the gowns. She 
had been taught how to look beautiful. She 
was the most expensive doll a man could marry. 
Her mother had been the same. 

If you pulled the right strings she answered 
in French, or talked of the latest plays or novels 
or murder trial. She was wonderfully well ar- 
ranged, and had never done anything outre in 
her life. And she had a brother in the Guards 
exactly like her, a tall, big, blond hero, the nicest 
stupid person imaginable, with tremendous arms 
and a great hearty laugh. 

With the least touch of imagination one could 
see Felicity being taken out of tissue paper and 
ribbons every morning and being wound up for 
the day. 

This was the girl Edmond married. 


Felicity 129 

The second person in her accepted the inevi- 
table with a sigh, and her mind wandered to a 
series of talks she had stolen with an artist who 
had painted her portrait. 

He was rather a blunt chap, this artist, who 
was married to a woman who was in a lunatic 
asylum, a woman with whom he had been de- 
votedly in love. So his view of the world was 
not obscured by much sham. 

He had painted Felicity when she was seven- 
teen, and they had grown to understand one an- 
other in a very short time. In this way Felicity 
grew to steal half-hours, and sometimes half-days, 
long after the portrait was finished, when she 
ought to have been at the dressmaker’s, or having 
tea with some girl, in going to the studio to see 
Peter Rendle. 

He taught her how to live inside herself, how 
to enjoy the pompous pretensions of the people 
she lived with, he taught her to laugh quietly at 
the routine laid out for her. For she really had 
a sense of humour. 

She came to see him in a stolen hour during 
the preparations for the wedding, in order to 
find out what he thought of her engagement. 

As soon as she entered the studio he came 
forward, shook her warmly by the hand, and 
said, “ It’s an interesting face, very interesting.” 
On a table was an illustrated paper open at two 
portraits of Felicity and Edmond. 


130 


St. Quin 


The idea that Edmond’s face was interesting 
struck her as quite a novelty, and she looked 
carefully at the portrait before speaking. 

“ I had to marry somebody,” she said. “ It’s 
my fate, Peter.” 

“ Love him?” 

She sat back in a big easy-chair and looked 
long at her one friend. “ I came to talk to you 
about that,” she said. 

“ Out with it,” said Rendle, blowing clouds of 
smoke from his pipe. 

“ Of course, I ought not to be here,” said 
Felicity. 

“ Of course not,” said he. 

“ And I shan’t be able to come again.” 

“ You will come as soon as you want to,” 
said he. 

“ It isn’t a question of right and wrong,” said 
she, “ but perhaps it’s not quite sporting.” 

“ You will come as soon as you want to,” he 
answered. 

“ I want to feel I have at least one friend, one 
real proper friend who — well, who understands.” 

“ Look here,” he said suddenly. “ What in 
the name of thunder are you doing marrying 
at all?” 

She looked up and laughed rather sadly. “ It’s 
part of the game, Peter,” she said. 

“ Cut the whole thing,” he said bluntly. 

“And run away with you? Don’t be silly.” 


Felicity 13 1 

“ My dear infant,” said he, “ you are chucking 
away a fine life just to please a lot of nincom- 
poops who don’t matter a tinker’s cuss. Revolt. 
You’ve got plenty of money. There is real hap- 
piness for you and a good man somewhere. Brave 
it out. Leave him and live your own life.” 

“ Teddy is rather a dear.” 

“ It isn’t any good marrying ‘ rather a dear’; 
you ought to be thinking he is a young god, you 
ought to be treading the fields of Parnassus, and 
thinking of life in terms of poetry. I’m old 
enough to be your father, and I know.” 

“ We shall get on very well.” 

“ Like a pair of well-fed cats;” said Rendle. 
“ Yes, I dare say you will. Your life is made 
up of so many shams that there won’t be time 
to see the realities. If you mean to be an artifi- 
cial flower instead of the rosebud you are then 
Heaven help you, because I can’t.” 

“ He likes all the things I like,” said Felicity. 
“ And he is very gentle and kind. And, you see, 
in our kind of life we have to know so many 
people there won’t be much time to know each 
other.” 

“ Year in, year out,” Rendle almost shouted. 
“Talking puppet-talk; repeating little scandals, 
Society gossip, banalities, all the things that don’t 
matter. I would sooner you outraged the whole 
of your Society by running away with a cross- 
ing-sweeper than settle down to this abominable 


132 


St. Quin 


confectionery you call life. Rosebud, don’t do 
it. If it was for money, or position, I could un- 
derstand it, but to do this because it is convenient 
seems to be horrible.” 

She could not tell him of that silver night of 
* stars, and the voices in the shadows of the trees. 
She could not tell him that Edmond had moved 
her as no man had moved her, because those 
things were secret and sacred. But she knew that 
was not all of Love and might one day die and 
leave just the blank routine to go on with for 
the rest of life. 

“ I care what people think,” she told him. 

“ And you came here to see me alone,” said 
Rendle. 

“ For the last time.” 

Rendle laughed. “ My dear infant,” he said, 
“ we shall both need to meet, I think, and what 
we need we get, people like you and me.” 

“ Nobody would ever guess I was like this.” 

“ Very few people know anything but the shells 
the world wears, and perhaps it is just as well. 
Life is a fancy-dress ball, masks and dominoes 
and glad rags covering all sort of misery and un- 
happiness. Anyhow, my dear, keep your own 
sweet personality, and you won’t get worse hurt 
than most of us. Grin if you can’t smile.” 

“ Oh, I’ve got a very nice mask,” said Felicity. 
“ I only take it off here. But there,” she sighed, 
“ that’s all over. Good-bye, Peter, dear friend. 


Felicity 133 

I don’t know why you and I like each other, 
but ” 

“ Say love each other,” said Rendle. “ It’s 
more real. Both of us need a lot of love in this 
life, and it’s good to get it. Marry the man if 
you must, but don’t forget all we have talked 
about and dreamed. And don’t write to me; I 
hate letters and never read them. I’m not com- 
ing to the wedding, I loathe weddings. I’m send- 
ing you a picture.” 

“ How ripping. I want one of yours.” 

“ It isn’t mine, my dear. My lump of a brain 
can’t conceive these things. I wanted you to 
have something to remind you of our point of 
view. Look at it; don’t you like it?” 

He placed a small canvas on the easel and 
wheeled it to a good light. 

On a bank by a pool sat a slim girl looking 
at herself in the water. Her young body was 
beautifully drawn, and the white of her skin 
gleamed against the grass and flowers. A nut 
tree gave shadow to the pool, and on the bank 
by the tree lay all the girl’s clothes, a white 
satin dress, slippers of white sewn with seed 
pearls, a crown, and a dainty heap of linen. The 
colour was pure and delicate. 

“ I love it,” said Felicity. 

“He’s a great chap,” said Rendle. “A chap 
called Brian O’Cree. This picture stands for you 
and me, you understand. Water, air, trees, flow- 


134 


St. Quin 


ers — wild flowers mark you — and the nakedness 
of truth. The burden of the world, a crown, fine 
clothes, symbols on the bank. It is our dual 
personality, the two lives we live.” 

She put out both hands to him. “ I under- 
stand, n she said. “ There are no proper words 
to thank you with, but — but I’ll take the bride’s 
privilege.” So, rosily blushing, she kissed him 
on the cheek. 

And after she had gone Rendle sat silently 
thinking until the day grew dark. 


CHAPTER XIII 


A COMEDY OF MANNERS 

Messrs. Bathwick and Ducks are indeed ex- 
cellent tailors. I admire your suits, your taste, 
and your gentle ways with debtors, but mostly 
do I admire your cut. I can recognise you any- 
where, even on portly old gentlemen and youths 
with figures like very good umbrellas. When I 
walk down Piccadilly I bow to you -and, behold, 
a voice speaks from your wonderful suit, and it 
is, sure enough, my old friend Lord Nuffling, eye- 
glass and all, out for an airing. 

Madame Bosque, I kiss your hands for the 
many times you have made my susceptible heart 
flutter. Your choice of colours touches me in 
the park, at the theatre, in Bond Street. I raise 
my hat, or rather the hat Messrs. Spalding and 
Shutleigh decide I shall raise to you, and, behold, 
the vision speaks. It is my dear friend Lady 
Sowles, one of your finest creations. 

With what grace, Mr. Potter, do you not ad- 
mit me to set foot in 17 The Belvedere! How 
beautifully you answer the telephone, Mr. Scar- 
let; I can see you bend over the mouthpiece with 
exaggerated deference as I give my name. “ Mr. 

135 


St. Quin 


136 

St. Quin is not at home, sir.” No, I am sure 
he is not, for 17 The Belvedere is not a home, it 
is a palace of mechanical contrivances. It is here 
I am fed by Monsieur Auge; it is here I see 
Madame’s maid in attendance with costly wraps; 
it is here Mr. Scarlet lays out with tact and pre- 
cision the clothes his master must wear. Mr. 
Scarlet — ah, and Mr. Potter, know the names 
and titles and relationships of all the aristocracy 
and their friends. No sham baron, or counter- 
feit marquise could deceive them, for is not I rd 
Nuffling Bertie to them, and Lady Sowles but 
Kitty Treloy of the Gaiety? 

In the very cream of the creamiest neighbour- 
hood is The Belvedere. Here are almost royal 
infants rocked to sleep, and dukes may be seen 
fresh shaved every morning. Here do ambas- 
sadors drink tea, and the most expensive dogs 
take the air. Old masters adorn the walls, and 
priceless china lies unlooked at in invaluable cabi- 
nets. And for every two people who live here 
there live about fifteen servants. It is a hive 
ruled by butlers, elegant ladies’ maids, supercilious 
gentlemen’s valets, and lordly chauffeurs. To 
The Belvedere there flock countless tradespeople, 
and hairdressers and barbers, milliners, jewellers, 
shoemakers, and purveyors of all that is rich 
and costly. 

And here, padded, as it were, on every side, 
live Edmond and Felicity St. Quin. 


A Comedy of Manners 137 

They are young and rich, and have thousands 
of acquaintances with whom they dine, dance, 
shoot, and ride. And she has one real friend, 
and he has a memory. But between them what 
is there? 

She is always charming, kind, thoughtful, and 
beautifully dressed. He is charming, kind, 
thoughtful, and beautifully dressed. If you pulled 
a string they would say: u Of course we adore 
each other,” quite naturally. 

They are perfectly healthy, and in a way 
happy, and they have been married three years, 
and they have no child. The stork has not called 
at that house. 

The Belvedere is an impassive place by day 
with its big solid white houses, and its garden 
square, and the constant show of liveried serv- 
ants delivering beautiful women out of carriage 
rugs to other liveried servants by open doors. 
And the open doors reveal delightful halls, into 
which the ordinary pedestrian world gazes, and 
having gazed departs to inform others that it 
has seen the wonderful chandelier at number 
twenty-three, or the Duke of Nonsuch lighting 
a cigarette, or Mrs. Willie J. Pott glancing at 
a present of orchids. 

If it is impressive by day it is doubly so by 
night when a myriad lights spring up and fine 
music soothes the air, and a reception blocks 
the street opposite number seventeen. But if that 


St. Quin 


138 

is impressive, how much more again is it when 
The Belvedere sleeps and the great houses seem 
to close their solemn eyes, and it is all bricks, 
and dreams, and mortar, and the heavens above 
a deep purple robe set with precious stars. Then 
can the prisoners escape in dreams. 

The night airs are dangerous to some minds. 
To such an one as Edmond the magic of this 
place at night appeals too much. Oh, Mr. Scar- 
let, best of valets, where are you? Where is your 
faithful eye, Mr. Potter, most obsequious of but- 
lers? For Mr. St. Quin has opened the window 
of the bedroom where he sleeps, and should be 
sleeping now, and leans out and sees the trees 
all velvet black and hushed, and a great quietude 
about the streets. And leaning thus, with the 
fever of a fashionable day still on him, catches 
an Immortal disease whose name is Romance. 

The true perspective vanishes. Instead, he sees 
olive trees and lemon gardens, a deep blue lake 
with mountains white with snow beyond; and 
hears the nightingale throb his broken heart into 
the still air and mingle his despairing melody 
with the scent of oleanders, orange blossom, and 
eucalyptus. 

Once more he seems to tread the ancient ways, 
walking as if on air to meet a ghost. 

“ Mariette, are you there? Is that indeed 
you, Mariette?” 


f A Comedy of Manners 139 

And the ghost gives answer: “ Raoul, dear, 
come and talk to me, I’m such a lonely child.” 

So he tells her how his wife is beautiful, and 
charming, and kind, and thoughtful. And she 
asks for more. “ You love her, don’t you, dear 
Raoul?” 

Does he? Honestly he does not know. If 
this is love, then all the poets lie, and all romances 
weave a wicked dream. And yet what more is 
there? 

“ Come in, Mariette; come into this fine house. 
I’ll show you where Beauty all asleep lies on her 
ivory bed under a canopy of silk.” 

And so he takes her into Felicity’s room. 

It smells of roses very faintly and looks like 
roses. The walls are of creamy silk, with silver 
brackets for the electric lights. The curtains a 
rose colour; the bed of ivory. 

There is one picture on the wall. It is of a 
young princess looking at her slim body in a pool, 
her clothes and crown laid by under a nut tree. 
Edmond has often looked at this picture, often 
wondered why his wife loved it so much. She 
says: “ It’s jolly, don’t you think so? and I love 
the colour.” For him it means escape, escape 
from this life that is beginning to choke him, but 
which he lives because he thinks she likes it. 

And his dear ghost says: “ She is beautiful.” 

She is beautiful. Her fair hair has escaped 


St. Quin 


140 

its thongs of silk, and strays over the pillows. 
She sleeps like a tired child, trusting the world 
in the wonderful purity of her dreams. There is 
a sanctity about the room, and something pathetic 
in the sleeping figure of the lovely girl. 

All this comes as in a waking dream to Ed- 
mond as he gazes out of the window, until a little 
baby breeze shakes the leaves of the trees, a 
faint light spreads across the east, and a drowsy 
bird cheeps an impudent “ good morning ” to a 
waking world. 

No sleep for Edmond now. He washes quickly 
in cold water, dons the first suit he can find, steals 
down the stairs, passes great empty rooms feel- 
ing like a culprit, and, opening the front door as 
quietly as he may, goes out into the street. 

Almost simultaneously the door of number 
eighteen opens, and the old Duke of Nonsuch 
comes slowly down the steps. 

“ Up early,” says the Duke. 

“ I could not sleep,” says Edmond. “ Beauti- 
ful morning.” 

The old Duke takes his arm. “ Maria snores,” 
he says. Maria is the Duchess. 

They walk slowly along, and turn into Pic- 
cadilly. 

“ I take a cup of coffee here as a rule,” says 
the Duke, turning towards a coffee-stall. 

Edmond is too surprised to answer. 

They join a small group of workmen, and drink 


A Comedy of Manners 141 

their coffee in silence. “ The eggs are not al- 
ways bad,” says the Duke. “ Will you ?” 

“ No, thanks, indeed,” Edmond answers, won- 
dering all the time. 

“ I surprise you,” says the Duke, “ but then 
I am old enough to do what I like. And you, 
St. Quin, surprise me. I heard you talking to 
Allandale the other night about architecture. You 
have travelled.” 

“ I have been in Italy.” 

“ Plenty of people have been in Italy who have 
never seen it. Maria ” he checked himself. 

“ I was reminded of Italy this morning,” said 
Edmond. 

“ Young man,” says the Duke, looking at him 
with a kindly smile, “ aren’t you a little tired 
of our dolls’-house life — eh? We are no better 
than upper servants, many of us. Ah, well, I’ve 
had my day, and grown old. But you — you don’t 
seem the sort of young man who should have his 
life pampered out for him. You were looking at 
that Lowestoft service of mine the other day, 
what do you think of it? ” 

“The cream-jug is a reproduction,” says Ed- 
mond quickly. “ I beg your pardon.” 

They walk on a few steps before the Duke 
speaks. “ I am a great connoisseur of china, and 
you are perfectly right. I see you observe. I 
know you read, and you can talk well. And you 
are living the life of a poodle. Why? ” 


142 


St. Quia 


“ Why? ” says Edmond, completely taken 
aback. “Why? Well, one does. There’s no” 
— and he laughs suddenly — “ no escape, is 
there? ” 

They were walking up Piccadilly now, and 
the sunrise was reflected in the club windows, 
that seemed to blink as if it had woken them 
from sleep. Men were washing down the roads, 
market carts lumbered by, a mail motor-wagon 
dashed past, and a few people, men and women 
early workers, walked past. 

“ I prowl about,” says the Duke. “ All this 
is interesting, isn’t it? There is a thrush who 
sings every morning just by the Ritz. Pm tak- 
ing you to hear it. The finest concert I know.” 

Edmond smiles. “ I used to be called ‘ The 
Prowler ’ at Oxford,” he says. 

“ Years ago,” says the Duke, “ when I was a 
figure in London Society, and was always being 
dressed or undressed for some function, I used 
to keep some rooms over an Italian eating-house 
in Soho. You know I did a verse translation 
of Horace. Well, I did it there. I used to go 
there, change into an old suit, do my work, and 
lunch in the little room downstairs. It was the 
best club I have ever belonged to ! they were all 
perfectly natural people, and I could be perfectly 
natural with them. Did you ever see, by any 
chance, a little book of verses called ‘ In the 
Streets ’ ? ” 


A Comedy of Manners 143 

“ By Henry Marland,” says Edmond. “ Pub- 
lished in 1871. I found a copy in Paris. Won- 
derful stuff. He died mysteriously, didn’t he?” 

“ Very mysteriously,” says the Duke, with a 
chuckle. “ I buried him.” 

“ You knew him? ” 

“ I have so many names,” says the old man 
wearily, “ that I used two of them to give a poet.” 

“You wrote ‘In the Streets,’ Duke?” says 
Edmond in great surprise. 

“ I did, my boy. I did. And it became so 
well known that I was forced to bury the poet. 
The affairs of the Nation had to be attended to, 
and the English suspect a poet more than they 
do a burglar. You see, a poet sometimes steals 
their hearts, and the English, as a public body, 
resent any suggestion that they have hearts. So 
there lies Henry Marland. Listen, we may hear 
my thrush directly.” 

Then “ the wise thrush who sings his song 
twice over ” lifted up his voice and proclaimed 
London the dwelling-place of Love. 

Is this the chance of escape? Is this the op- 
portunity to breathe more freely, to recapture, 
like the thrush, “ the first fine careless rapture ” 
of his life? 

The Duke of Nonsuch is listening to his thrush, 
and in his old eyes a gleam comes of youthful 
light. Behind the trees the pile of the hotel is 


St. Quin 


r 44 

bathed in morning light. Then, with much jing- 
ling of harness and champing of bits, comes a 
battery of artillery down the street, the men fresh 
and smart, the horses glowing with satin-smooth 
coats. The thrush stops. And the Duke, rub- 
bing his chin, turns to Edmond. “ My boy,” he 
says, “ give me your arm again, we both need 
shaving.” 

They return to The Belvedere, now beginning 
to awake to activity; blinds are drawn up, and 
give quite an air of yawning to the windows. 

“ Thank you. Thanks — er — awfully,” says 
Edmond on the steps of number seventeen. 

The Duke of Nonsuch waves his hand. 

Up the stairs, past surprised maids and men 
in shirt sleeves goes Edmond to his room. 

Half-past six! He can get an hour’s sleep or 
more. 

At breakfast Felicity says: “ Teddy, you look 
very fit this morning.” 

To which he replies: “I’ve been out for a 
stroll with Nonsuch.” 

“ Funny idea,” says Felicity. “ What did you 
and the old thing find to talk about? ” 

“ A poet,” says he, “ who I thought was dead.” 

“Wasn’t he?” 

“ They never die,” says Edmond. 

“ What an extraordinary thing for you to say,” 
says Felicity. “ Do have some melon. It’s rip- 
ping.” 


CHAPTER XIV 

SO HE BEGAN TO PROWL 

That subtle invidious disease Edmond had 
caught, the Immortal Never-to-be-forgotten fever 
called Romance, played its usual havoc with him. 
Life had a new zest, a new odour for him. He 
saw possibilities where nothing but blank uninter- 
est had appeared before. He haunted the most 
unlikely places and returned filled with little mind- 
pictures. London opened her immense arms and 
offered herself for his embrace. 

Here were old churchyards where poets lay 
buried, where lovers had strayed. Here he would 
see the ghost of Doctor Johnson, a burly snuff- 
and tea-stained ghost, tapping posts as he walked. 
Here David Garrick hurried to the theatre, Sheri- 
dan cracked a joke, or Steele cracked a bottle. 
Here came Izaak Walton, fishing-rod in hand; 
and here again came Sterne from his Bond Street 
lodging. 

But not these alone made company for his 
walks. Real lovers, Cockney Kings and Queens, 
hand in hand in dark alleys, shut in by hideous 
factories, smoke-grimed, ill-smelling streets, yet 

145 


St. Quin 


146 

with the same great passion that has seized poets 
in garrets they looked into each other’s eyes and 
dreamed the hours away. 

Great Mother London of the countless children 
took yet another lover to herself and showed her 
every grace and mood to Edmond, her smiles, her 
frowns, her passionate temper, and her great 
abundant tears. Yet mostly she made for laugh- 
ter such as the gods love. Her little artificial side 
he now saw with eyes clear with sympathy. As 
how fashionable dogs took servants for walks; 
how a great stream of passionate humanity would 
flow past the unheeding person of the young ex- 
quisite; how children owned odd corners: here 
rich and romping they filled Kensington Gardens 
with jolly shouts and the quick tears of their tiny 
tragedies, there poor yet romping they woke 
echoes in city churchyards converted into gardens, 
they danced and spun tops, and laughed among 
memorials of the silent dead; ages old churches 
where Sunday services were droned gave them 
shade, while, on the other side, places where rab- 
bits were skinned gave them amusement. 

Edmond, fired by the old Duke’s suggestion, 
sought quiet rooms and found them in a Chelsea 
backwater. Here he kept old clothes, here he 
began his translation of Frangois Villon, and here 
the smoke of French cigarettes floated from his 
open windows. 

Every call Felicity made upon him was scrupu- 


So he Began to Prowl 147 

lously observed. Immaculately dressed he became 
at her bidding the puppet who sat by her in the 
car, in her box at the opera, with her at dinner- 
parties, first nights at the theatre, race meetings 
— all the surfeit of their round. But gradually 
he was allowed to divorce himself from many 
functions until it was understood between them 
that from ten in the morning until six in the even- 
ing the time was his own. The club was a suffi- 
cient explanation, billiards was understood to be 
his hobby. If Felicity could have seen the club 
or the billards she would have thought that some 
story of the Arabian Nights was being enacted 
before her enchanted eyes. 

French billiards they were in a little back-room 
of a restaurant in Soho, played against out-of- 
work painters, or musicians fro'm theatre orches- 
tras, with undoubted Anarchists, or Italians with 
odd pasts and certain of odder futures. 

He knew and liked these people, he understood 
them, could talk to them in their own language, 
not only of the tongue but of the heart. As it 
was a club from which members suddenly and 
mysteriously vanished no questions were asked — 
except at lawful moments when sudden necessity 
arose. 

As for instance : one winter afternoon Edmond 
was playing billards in the back room with a pale, 
tall man, but recently a member. This man al- 
lowed it to be understood that he had been a head- 


St. Quin 


148 

waiter and that circumstances — etc., etc. He ap- 
peared to have no clothes but his dress-clothes, 
with which he wore a big black scarf covering 
his studless shirt-front. They were clothes of 
the finest material and the best cut; his socks 
were of silk; his boots of patent leather, and 
had obviously come from a good bootmaker. 
He was a man with whom it was a delight to 
talk, and he recognised in Edmond a congenial 
spirit. 

On this winter afternoon there were only five 
people besides Edmond and this man playing in 
the billiard-room, and little sound but the click of 
the balls, and the constant hacking cough of a 
man who sat over the fire. The man was bending 
over the table making his shot when the door was 
opened and three men entered. In an instant his 
companion drew a revolver, but before he could 
fire two of the men sprang at him and held his 
arms. The third man, white in the face but with 
the glitter of capture in his eyes, disarmed him. 
It was over in an instant. They had handcuffed 
him, and the third man said in a low voice, “ I 
arrest you for the murder of Madame Bonvet on 
November the fourteenth.” The man made no 
reply, but drew himself up just for a moment, 
glared at the detective, and then fainted. The 
other men in the room had stood up during the 
scene, but had not moved. Before the detective 
left he took a long look at Edmond, a look that 


So he Began to Prowl 149 

seemed to take in every detail of him for future 
reference. 

Edmond dined out that night, and the talk ran 
on the capture of this murderer, on the extraor- 
dinary way in which the man had escaped in his 
dress-clothes and had managed to remain hidden 
not two miles from the scene of his crime. Many 
stories were told of the possibilities of remaining 
hidden in London, of the people who had led 
double lives, or utterly vanished, and all the time 
Edmond kept an interested silence, wondering 
what these people would think if he suddenly pro- 
claimed that he had been playing billiards with the 
man at the time of his arrest. 

The only person who knew he had changed was 
his sister Barbara. She and her husband dined 
quietly in The Belvedere sometimes, and Hya- 
cinth, who was beginning to get a small following 
for his plays, grew to like Felicity very much. 

“ It does one good to look at her,” he told his 
wife, “ and she’s much more human than she al- 
lows one to suspect. Do you think they get on? ” 

“ They get on,” she answered, “ about as well 
as two very expensive chocolates do in a very ex- 
pensive box.” 

“ He’s a splendid chap,” said Venn, “ and she’s 
awfully jolly. I don’t understand it.” 

“ My dear and very blind person,” said Bar- 
bara, “ it is a case of two delightful people who 
have never had time to fall in love with each 


150 St. Quin 

other. They are like people who see all the sights 
of London, and yet know nothing about it. One 
day ” — she shrugged her shoulders — “ will come 
the explanation — or the deluge.” 

“You ought to be the writer of plays,” said 
Hyacinth, laughing. 

“ Teddy is changing,” was her answer. 

“ Well?” 

“ He might see somebody.” 

“ In the words of your father,” said Hyacinth, 
“ the St. Quins never do that sort of thing.” 

“ But they freeze their hearts,” she answered. 

“ Do they have hearts? ” 

She put her arms round his neck. “ Have I? ” 
she said. 

“ You revolted,” he said, kissing her. “ You 
chose between real life and a waxwork show. 
Now, honestly ” 

“ My mother,” she said slowly, “ was never 
in love with my father. I’m sure of that. And 
I’m also sure that she had been in love with some- 
one else all her life.” 

“ Sentimentalist,” said Hyacinth. 

“ It’s more real than your stage realism,” she 
answered. “ I’m frightened for Teddy. I like 
Felicity, but she’s not really happy. I can see it 
in her eyes. She would love to have a baby.” 

“ Liberty, Quality, and Maternity — that’s your 
motto,” said Hyacinth. “ I dare say you are 
right.” 


So he Began to Prowl 151 

“ Do you know,” said Barbara, “ a woman is 
always right in these things, but she doesn’t know 
why.” 


All Edmond’s ordinary life began to fade as 
if it were unreal. He lived in his free hours with 
a zest he never knew in those times when he lived 
in his wife’s society. They talked freely and 
openly on subjects of the moment. She made 
herself beautiful to please him just as he did the 
“ correct ” thing just to please her. And the 
memory of that first real kiss in the woods was 
very faint. He liked and admired her immensely, 
and she found in him a distinction she never found 
in other menybut they were poles asunder. 

At first he wondered if it would be well to tell 
her of his prowlings. His conscience pricked him 
that he should hide so much of his life from her, 
but, when it came to the point, that she might 
ask him to give it up with the idea of “ What 
would people think? ” he decided that since love 
had been denied him nothing should take away 
his freedom. 

Once again furniture began to interest him. 
He haunted antique shops, he became known in 
sale rooms, and then, with this, he began to recon- 
struct for himself a Georgian London peopled 
with ghosts in wig and sword, in buckled shoes 
and wide-skirted coats. He seemed to see sedan- 
chairs swaying down St. James’s Street on gilded 


St. Quin 


152 

poles; to hear the cry of “Chaney Oranges”; 
to listen for the horse of Button the highwayman; 
to see ladies in sacques eating cheese-cakes in St. 
James’s Park, while countrymen ran smock races 
in the Mall. 

Tall old red-brick houses in unfashionable 
streets drew him to them with a growing fascina- 
tion. Link-boys stood by the doors, a littlb black 
page-boy waits with a monkey on a chain; my 
lord frets within while Clarissa toys with ribbons 
for her hair. The horses in the carriage dr ip 
their bits, and Charles the coachman fumes as the 
night-air, damp and misty, straightens the curls 
of his wig. Here comes Clarissa dainty as a fan 
— tap, tap, her red-heeled shoes, frou-frou her 
silken skirts. Here comes my lord with an ill 
grace. They will be late at Lady Beamish’s 
rout. Off swings the coach, the link-boys left 
behind. 

All this can Edmond see as he stands before an 
old house, once the house of some proud beauty, 
now a warehouse for vast piles of patent shoe 
blacking. Next to it is perhaps a shabby restau- 
rant, a laundry, a foreign newspaper shop, -a dusty 
shop whose bow-fronted windows once held lam- 
poons against the K g of E d, or cari- 
catures of the D k of M-n-t-r-s. 

And then one day when his prowling took him 
further afield, turning down a narrow lane off a 
main street hideous with trams, he walked be- 


i53 


So he Began to Prowl 

neath a high garden wall, down another lane, past 
a church, and there by the river, far from any 
sound of modern life and hurry, found The 
House. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE HOUSE 

Red brick, faced with white stone, it stood there a 
perfect specimen of Early Georgian architecture. 
It stood like a quaint jewel on its bed of green 
lawn. The garden walls were high, a great pair 
of old wrought-iron gates gave on to a private 
road, and old trees, chestnuts, mulberries, and 
beech trees shaded the grounds. 

It was for sale. 

It so happened that an old caretaker was leav- 
ing by a little side garden door, and it so hap- 
pened that Edmond met him and got the keys 
from him, together with a long, rambling state- 
ment. 

He closed the door on the caretaker, walked 
softly over the grass, and stood in front of the 
house. The thrill the true collector knows was 
his. This was the perfect thing. Once the garden 
door was closed the twentieth century was shut 
out; the eighteenth century stood there composed, 
restrained, peaceful. 

He walked up to the front door, and paused. 

Under a portico of white Corinthian columns 
was a perfectly proportioned door, on either side 

154 


The House 


155 

a narrow window, above a fanlight finely carved. 

He unlocked the door, and found himself stand- 
ing in a big square hall with a wide staircase in 
front of him that led to a gallery. Under the 
gallery, and directly opposite to the front door, 
was another door leading into the garden. Over 
the gallery a great window, deep set, went half 
way the height of the wall. 

He had a sense of being in the presence of 
some very powerful personality. Was it because 
the banisters had been caressed by hands ruffled 
with fine lace? Was it because # silks and satins 
and padesoys and lutestring had brushed the many 
stairs? There had been a long table over against 
that wall surely, on which a case of pistols had 
lain, a mask perhaps, a wrap-rascal cloak, a 
sword. This door on his left had seen men come 
out dusting snuff from brocade coats. That door 
knew the cloud of wig-powder, the smell of musk 
and bergamot. 

He explored the house. His own footsteps 
sounding far less real than those he strained his 
ears to catch. Little high red heels pitter-pat- 
tering. 

The bedrooms had each .a powder-closet; were 
panelled, had good wood floors. And there were 
great attics and a bacon-chamber, and a narrow 
back stairway. From this room to that you must 
go up three steps; from that to this you stepped 
three paces down. 


St. Quin 


X S6 

Here was a sudden unexpected little chamber 
looking towards the garden, with just a faint 
glimpse of a church tower and old roofs through 
the trees. Here, in this little chamber, someone 
had sat and played little songs about Daphne and 
Chloe on a harpsichord. 

It was all so perfect and so beautiful that Ed- 
mond stopped here and there to rest a loving 
hand on the good mouldings, on the fine fireplaces, 
the well set doors. 

At last he sat down on a window-seat and let 
his fancy play. 

Of course, it was the home of some delightful 
lady. He began to picture her, tripping down the 
stairs, coming from the still-room, sitting at one 
end of the long drawing-room sewing at a sam- 
pler. 

The London of this lady’s date flashed into his 
mind in half a dozen ways. She would have come 
from town by the coach from “ The Old White- 
horse Cellars” in Piccadilly. No; by her own 
carriage, an armed guard sitting by the coachman, 
and a man behind armed likewise, for there would 
be highwaymen about. 

She was not married, and had died young. Of 
that he felt certain. And her house had been full 
of beautiful furniture, slim-legged and slender. 
Those big cupboards had held her big whaleboned 
petticoats, her flowered gowns. Big presses had 
held fine home-made linen smelling of lavender. 


The House 


157 

A play-bill had lain on this very window-seat 
announcing Mr. Garrick as Romeo and Miss Bel- 
lamy as Juliet. And by it a card engraved by 
Hogarth announcing the fact that one could pur- 
chase clothes at Mrs. Holt’s “ at ye Olive Posts 
in ye Broad part of the Strand.” 

What a queer world she knew, a world of fairs, 
where harlequins shouted against peep-show men, 
they against bear wards, and they against quack 
doctors. 

Here, down the lane by the garden, came the 
men and women who sold flounders and peri- 
winkles, and the Punch-and-Judy showman with 
his squeaky call. Here, strawberries were called 
by the pottle; door-mats, Turk’s-head mops, and 
hassocks, all were cried. 

Could she know the Piazza at Covent Garden 
by Tom’s Coffee House, or Garraway’s? Her 
hairdresser came from here. 

It is a quaint gallery this of odd figures, who 
form the background to the history of this house : 
beaux in wide skirts, bullies, highwaymen, cut- 
purse captains, pirates hanging in chains, ladies 
drenched in strong perfumes, beggar kings who 
let out good pitches to other beggars, sailors with 
greasy pigtails, bilks, fops, and fribbles. A world 
of cogged dice and masquerade, of early morn- 
ing duels in Leicester Fields, of elopements, of 
plenitude of idiots in the streets, of heavy drink- 
ing of rum, stingo, Hollands, and usquebaugh. 


St. Quin 


158 

A world of Bow Street runners, of broken- 
down soldiers turned hired bullies, of wig shops 
full of monstrous wigs. A world where France 
lives in Leicester Fields. Petty France they call 
it — where water-gilders live, and clock makers, 
sign painters, and laundry folk, where there are 
little French restaurants for these people just as 
to-day. 

So the procession passed through Edmond’s 
mind. The house was redolent of the date. It 
was like a chapter of history come to life. 

This then should form the real interest in his 
life. He would buy the house and furnish it for 
its ghosts. 

He left that afternoon dazed with his idea. 
Within a month the house was his. 

Felicity wondered at the subtle change in her 
husband. Outwardly he was the same, a little 
bored, a little over-courteous to her. But in- 
wardly, and she could not fail to see it, he held 
some secret. His eyes would flash; he would 
laugh a little to himself sometimes. She thought 
that he had perhaps fallen in love with some other 
woman, but she was far too proud to seek to find 
out; and her mother understood her to be perfectly 
happy. 

Edmond had another love: his house. And 
from this house grew up his strange fancy for the 
ghost he himself had raised. 


The House 


159 

Curiously enough she came to him a little in 
the image of his wife, fair, very sweetly innocent, 
yet with a charming hint of worldliness. He be- 
gan to buy things for her, and to have them sent 
down to The House. 

What things he bought grew, in his strange 
fancy, to be wholly hers. They were chosen from 
her point of view. He imagined, he didn’t know 
why, that her father had been a sailor who had 
bought this house for himself but, being drowned 
at sea, had never lived in it. This feeling allowed 
for several heavy pieces of furniture and some 
brass-bound sea-chests. 

It was in this spirit that Edmond furnished the 
Admiral’s room, and had a great mahogany bed 
in it, and charts on the walls, and a cutlass, and 
at last, to his own great joy, he found and bought 
a uniform of the time and kept it in a tallboys. 

Then one day he bought a picture of a fine old 
soldier by some unknown painter of about 1718. 
This was hung in the dining-room because she 
would have liked it so. 

It took him, in all, three years to furnish the 
house — other things, as how he found servants, 
happened in the time, but of that later — and it 
was very delightful and complete, having just 
her taste in such little things as fans, comfit-boxes, 
and books. 

Every day you might read the news of nearly 
two hundred years back out of the Tatler or the 


i6o 


St. Quin 


Spectator . Nice original editions of Pope and 
Gray, Dryden, Fielding, and Sterne were in the 
book-cases. It was an expensive hobby, but it 
was worth everything to him who loathed with 
a deep loathing his other life at home. 

Then he bethought himself to search for her 
dresses, and he sought and found, from this place 
and that, striped dimities, and silk sacques, and 
flowered brocades, and satins, and old lace caps, 
and satin shoes. There they hung in her ward- 
robes and closets, and he would open the doors 
and look at the treasures and dream of how she 
looked in them. 

So came the day when he found the letter. It 
was in one of the dress pockets, a dress that had 
been laid by nearly two hundred years. 

It was a very short letter, with many curls and 
quaint ornaments of the pen, and it ran thus : 

“ I beg you, dear friend, not to think ill 
of me, but Domesticks will give us much 
trowble and anoyance, so of late I could not 
use my coach to bring me to you. I trust 
our parting will be short-lived. I am taking 
Dr. Cox’s Inestimable Angelical Tincture 
for the vapours, and muchly well praised, for 
I find it so. Sweet Pamela, my love. — B.” 

And underneath, in a different hand: 

“ Mem. Resolved to try Doctor C. May 
2nd. — Pamela.” 


The House 


161 


Pamela! Of course, it was her name. Pa- 
mela’s dresses hung in the cupboards, her fans 
lay on little tables, her favourite flowers appeared 
in the garden. Her ghostly figure trod the stairs, 
her ghostly hand opened doors. 

One door especially it opened, and that the 
door to Edmond’s secret mind. It was extraor- 
dinary to him that he should live here, and 
lunch there, surrounded by real flesh-and-blood 
people who, had they known, would have thought 
him mad. He wondered himself sometimes if 
he were mad, and how far his delusions would 
carry him. His translation of Villon ceased to 
interest him, the Soho Club saw him no more; 
The House and Pamela claimed all his thoughts, 
and he began to write those Verses to an Eigh- 
teenth Century Ghost which, in after years, 
brought him no small fame. 

Only those who allow themselves a dream life 
— and how many there are — will understand his 
sweet, intangible love for this woman. She sup- 
plied something for him his life lacked, it was 
that obscure sense known as a purpose. For the 
rest, his life lay upon lines as laid down as any 
railway — here one stops, here one changes, here 
and here only one dines, or sups, or sees the play. 
At the end lay the possession of the estates his 
father enjoyed, that was his terminus. At present 
he slowed up whenever he could and plucked 
flowers by the side of the line. His wife, pas- 


162 


St. Quin 


senger in this train, he indulged in all that a first- 
class passenger should have — comfort, politeness, 
and a regular attendance to the time-table, but as 
for intimacy, or exchange of ideas, custom and 
inclination made that impossible. Nor was he 
wilfully blind, or unkind. According to him Fe- 
licity would have no ideas, she would be as in- 
capable of understanding his dreams in The House 
as she would be of understanding the fact that 
her husband was a poet of no mean order. 

And Felicity looked long and often at her pic- 
ture of the little Princess by the pool, and won- 
dered why Fate had tied her to this kind, good 
gentleman who treated her with a grave courtesy 
and consideration when she had it on the tip of 
her tongue to say: “ Oh, let’s go away and do 
something mad instead of this hideous, everlast- 
ing sanity.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


SERVANTS TO A GHOST 

i . — How he found a Butler 

Your complete dreamer must be a practical man. 
As a mere visionary the stuff of his dreams will 
fall short of the reckoning. If you serve a wor- 
shipful lady, albeit she is a ghost, you must give 
her full service so that her furniture may be 
dusted, her chairs set in order, and the tops of 
the picture-frames untarnished. 

Now Edmond in his prowlings met many 
strange persons. Those who fill in the corners 
and odd-shaped bits of that picture-puzzle that 
makes a world. 

London is full of strange-looking men who 
seem to be sons by adoption of certain streets, 
who have a right to sit outside private houses, 
their only holding being a little-used road broom. 
And others of more tragic mien become known 
to dwellers in certain districts as stray persons, 
whose means of support is, to say the least, very 
precarious. They have an air as of those who 
carry a secret message; they seem to be children 
of London not born of earthly parents. And they 
163 


St. Quin 


164 

constantly shock and surprise one by the oddness 
of their apparel, the finding of one smoking a 
cigar, or in the sudden and undoubted possession 
of money. 

Marshalled in an army as one regiment they 
would present an appearance of veterans who had 
fought many great battles in life and always lost. 
No one of them has a complete suit, although 
wind and rain, sun and storm have tailored their 
garments into an indescribable tint of a mossy 
wet green. As for drill, this regiment could trim 
frayed cuffs with a wonderful precision; could 
give cast-off clothing a second, yes, and a third 
and fourth lease of life. And such, poor great 
souls, is their condition that nearly any suit hangs 
in folds about them, for in the grim march hunger 
is their constant companion. 

I do not speak of those whom drink has 
brought low, or evil lives, half lived in prisons, 
have brought down, but of those who are not 
capable to fight tooth and nail to get a hold, of 
those of small powers and little gifts. 

They are noted figures in the streets, and some 
have a gay method to hide their wounds and 
emptiness, and some a romantic method. Some 
swear by one meal a day at six of the evening, 
and some by constant small meals of a biscuit and 
a cigarette apiece. And they are brave, they are 
wonderful, these men scrapped by civilisation, 
and many an one has cast greedy eyes at the river 


Servants to a Ghost 165 

by night, and many an one has thought of death 
by an apparent accident in the crossing of a street. 
But all are buoyed by a strange, pathetic, ludi- 
crous Hope. 

It is to these people that London’s adventures 
come. They tell one another stories of that man 
in the Strand who starved three years and now 
enjoys a sudden fortune. They tell of that other 
man disgraced from his regiment, his club, his 
people, who was found by some old soldier and 
now lives at ease in Tunbridge Wells master of 
an allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds a 
year. How this one got into some never-ending 
melodrama out of which he draws his five-and- 
twenty shillings a week; how that one opens the 
door of such a club; and, again, how one married 
his landlady and lives in perpetual comfort. 

Watch them as you walk to town and mark 
how they know this and that cabman, and nod 
to shopkeepers and exchange a glance with police- 
men. They say that one there in a suit of faded 
checks, trousers, coat, and waistcoat all unlike, 
once ran a fine stable and had many a winner. 
That stoutish tall man was held in awe and rev- 
erence by goodness knows whom. They say he 
had the first chef in London and smoked marvel- 
lous cigars. 

Lastly, they are very secretive about their 
names. Despite all things one does not wish Vere 
de Vere trafficked on the pavement, or Plan- 


St. Quin 


1 66 

tagenet brought low to the gutter. Better plain 
Jimmy or old Bob than have it known that noble 
blood wears broken shoes. 

Among them are certain figures having a stamp 
and bearing quite alien to the rest. It is a sort 
of pathetic sham dignity, yet with all that a vig- 
orous appearance and a way of using their hands 
in free and pointed gesticulation. These affect 
certain streets in the neighbourhood of theatres 
and are seen to whisper to themselves as they 
walk, as if they were committing tremendous 
parts to memory. These are, as a rule, a little 
better dressed and take what pride they may in 
their personal appearance, and are to be seen 
posting letters — a sign of wealth since the stamp 
proves the spare penny — which, if the truth were 
known, are addressed to managers of touring 
companies asking for such parts as heavy fathers, 
kings, or butlers, or indeed expressing a willing- 
ness to appear in very subordinate positions as 
one of a crowd cheering a hero on to fortune, or 
battling in string armour in some stirring scene 
of vague historic import. 

There was a man, known to Edmond, who lived 
in one room in the same quiet street in Chelsea 
where the translation of Villon was begun. His 
temporary name was Nathaniel Bridgewater, and 
his voice had a comfortable and unctuous roll 
gained from thirty years’ experience as a stage- 
butler. On several occasions he had wished Ed- 


Servants to a Ghost 167 

mond a “ Good morning,” and had once gone to 
the length of asking him for the favour of a 
match. The acquaintance grew and developed in 
this simple way, so that Edmond began to look 
forward to the “ fine day at last ” or other simple 
sentence; delivered in a voice such as a bishop 
might use to one who had erred and been for- 
given. Then he found him one day comforting 
a small child who stood weeping bitter tears over 
the remains of a broken jug of beer. Mr. Bridge- 
water was giving a slightly modernised version 
of Polonius, adapted to the supposed consolation 
of a child. His rich voice had a kind, sweet- 
hearted ring in it, but all his utterances were met 
with tears, sobs, and a broken voice saying, 
“ She’ll beat me. She give me fourpence. She’ll 
’it me.” 

It fell to Edmond to produce a shilling, com- 
fort the child, and address himself to Mr. Bridge- 
water. He was about to lunch alone in a small 
Italian restaurant, and the thought took him to 
invite the actor to bear him company. Mr. 
Bridgewater accepted graciously and walked, 
bearing his stick as a pastoral staff, towards the 
restaurant with Edmond. 

It was then, with a misty eye, that Nathaniel 
Bridgewater admitted he had not tasted anything 
but bread and bacon — and that sparingly — for a 
week. 

It was then, also, that Edmond realised his need 


1 68 


St. Quin 

for servants for The House. Ordinary servants 
he might have had in plenty, but he did not want 
ordinary servants, he did not want anything ordi- 
nary in The House. A cook below stairs might 
be anybody you pleased, but to have Pamela’s 
own needs met by some person from a registry 
office — never. 

Mr. Bridgewater did him the honour to lunch 
with him on the following day, and a conversa- 
tion took place between them unique in the history 
of the engaging of butlers. 

“ I suppose,” said Edmond, “ that in your large 
experience you have played butlers? ” 

Mr. Bridgewater launched at once upon the 
subject of theatrical butlerdom. 

“ Never very great parts, Mr. Falconer ” (for 
so Edmond passed at the time), “ but telling. I 
have played exactly twenty-four butlers and I 
think I have given them a separate character. I 
played Mason in ‘ Doddles,’ with red hair, rather 
an innovation, I believe. And I played Fudge in 
‘ Under the Cedar Tree,’ as a very old man with 
a slight lisp — very effective they told me; — the 
Manchester Guardian said, I remember, ‘ Mr. 
Bridgewater was also in the picture.’ And now, 
Mr. Falconer, they will not employ me. I have 
been out for two years — for two years, and never 
an offer.” 

u Very strange,” said Edmond. 

“ Not in my profession. Not at all. We are 


Servants to a Ghost 169 

easily forgotten, sir, as any favourite of the foot- 
lights would tell you. I used to make them scream 
with my Porter in 1 Usquebaugh,’ an Irish play. 
I have made them cry as Noody the old servant 
in ‘ Barker’s Home.’ And do they remember me? 
No, sir.” 

“You have played in old English comedy?” 
Edmond asked. 

Mr. Bridgewater proceeded to relate his prow- 
ess in the plays of Sheridan and Goldsmith, and 
even went so far as to say he was a born Charles 
Surface in his younger days. “ And as for old 
Hardcastle, Mr. Falconer, the part might have 
been written for me.” 

“ I do not wish to ask an impertinent question,” 
said Edmond, “ but I take it a part would be 
rather acceptable just now.” 

Mr. Bridgewater’s eyes moistened suspiciously, 
he swallowed a little heavily, and all at once the 
figure of him seemed to shrink. 

“ To tell you the truth,” he said in an uneven 
voice, “ I have not got a shilling. It is a dread- 
ful confession to make, but you are a man of 
much sympathy and inspire confidence. I do not 
know which way to turn. In fact, I was almost 
thinking ” He stopped with a shudder. 

“ Mr. Bridgewater,” said Edmond, “ if you 
think I am mad, or my suggestion impossible, tell 
me at once and I shall not be offended. I have a 
house in Chiswick, a Georgian house, and I have 


St. Quin 


170 

a fancy to have a real Georgian butler dressed to 
the part. I have no doubt I shall find two other 
men to do the housework, and I need a cook be- 
sides. That is a difficulty. Now I propose that 
you should consider the offer of sixty pounds a 
year all found. The rooms upstairs are charm- 
ing; there is a delightful garden, and ” 

Mr. Bridgewater stayed him with an uplifted 
hand. “ Mr. Falconer, I am overwhelmed. The 
spirit of Romance is not dead. I am proud to be 
your servant.” 

“ Not mine,” said Edmond, holding out his 
hand. “ The servant of Mistress Pamela, an 
eighteenth-century ghost.” 

“ Mistress Pamela,” said Nathaniel Bridge- 
water, raising his glass. Then he blew his nose, 
shook Edmond warmly by the hand, and said, 
“ Providence keeps some of us young, thank 
God.” 

So Pamela found her butler. 

2 . — How he became acquainted with his Cook 

Those who look for Adventure find Adyenture. 
Those who believe in Romance can find it in a 
Gasworks, if they have a mind. Those who are 
Prosaic find the world all prose, as does the Poet 
from the fullness of his heart sing songs even of 
Sculleries. Some are born to a cloak and a sword; 
and some have cheque-books in their cradles. To 


Servants to a Ghost 


171 

some all gardens are likely to hold Princesses and 
half kingdoms waiting to be won; others again 
find Fairies dull, and see reams of Poetry in 
Stocks and Shares. 

But be you Poet, Romanticist, Adventurer, or 
Cynic, it is an awful job to find a cook. Espe- 
cially such a cook as Edmond needed. 

She must be discreet with something of humour. 
Her hand must beat material facts together and 
make out of them dreams of Omelettes and Con- 
fectionery. She must love both Roast and Boiled. 
Only a person of imagination can make a Salad. 
She must, therefore, have imagination. 

Mr. Bridgewater was a complete success. He 
acted the butler to his own and Edmond’s great 
satisfaction. The opening of the door was per- 
fection. And the ceremony of lunch was a poem 
in itself. 

He lived in a wide-skirted coat of black, with 
knee breeches, a white stock with a lace fall, and 
a powdered wig. Edmond had suggested that he 
could dispense with the wig. 

“ No, Mr. Falconer, sir. I am, let me assure 
you, more at home in a wig. Clothes are a second 
nature to me, and as we are doing this delightful 
thing let us do it properly. A judge is not 
ashamed to wear a wig, so why should I lag be- 
hind. You have got to find a cook.” 

So far the meals Edmond had at The House 
were of a cold and simple order — as salads, 


ij2 St. Quin 

ham, and chicken, brought by him from some 
shop. 

Also he was ignorant of the habitat of cooks. 

One cannot go up to a motherly woman in the 
street and beg her to come and live with you as 
the controller of your digestion. In a more reas- 
onable world this would be the one and true 
course. One hears of artists so struck by some 
fair lady’s beauty that they risk the most appalling 
snubs in order to beg for one sitting that they may 
place the record of such beauty down. Most of 
the beauties are not offended, for is not beauty a 
public gift? One cannot keep beauty to oneself. 
Then why the great and wonderful mystery of 
cooking? There are, for certain, perfect Ome- 
lettes never born because of our ridiculous con- 
ventions. 

Then there suddenly appears, as if by magic, 
the very person in Victoria Station. She is in 
that state when tears are gathering to be presently 
shed. She is in the costume of a Breton of Quim- 
perle. She has lost her purse and her references, 
and her temper just a little. And she looks 
charming. And the crowd thinks the scene is 
really arranged for a cinema show. 

Edmond, who has just seen Felicity off on a 
week-end visit to her mother, enters the picture. 

A young gentleman who has rashly admitted to 
a knowledge of the French tongue is very embar- 
rassed by a torrent of half French, half Breton 


Servants to a Ghost 


173 

which is being poured at him. His one visit to 
Paris has not prepared him for this. Three 
porters stand grinning. An interpreter has been 
sent for. 

Edmond, grasping the situation, enters the 
breach. 

“ What is your trouble?” he asks her in 
Breton. 

“Ain’t he talking funny?” says a Cockney 
lady. 

But the sunshine, the joy on the face of poor 
Marie Louise! She explains. She explains with 
her face, her hands, her eyes, her whole person. 

The one visit to Paris young gentleman retires 
mot without honour. 

“ My purse is stolen, and my bag — I have my 
box of clothes, but all else is gone,” wails the poor 
Marie Louise. “ I came to find a situation. 
What shall I do?” 

“A situation?” says Edmond. “As what?” 

“ As cook.” 

Mon Dieu! here is the whole question solved. 
A bolt from the blue. A favour of the gods. 
Who says Adventure is dead? 

For Background: the interested crowd, the 
bookstall — Palace of Romances, the steaming, 
puffing engines. 

For Situation: the hero’s wife just away to see 
her mother. 

For Complication: the very publicity of it. 


St. Quin 


174 

For Poetry: the charm of poor Marie Louise 
in her great frilled collar, her wide skirts, and 
linen cap with cherry-coloured strings. 

For Humour: that one should see one’s wife 
off one moment, and the next find a cook for a 
separate, though innocent, establishment. 

“ I engage you,” says Edmond. 

Marie Louise, who thinks he must be at least 
second cousin to the King, gratefully and tear- 
fully accepts. He orders everyone about. A 
porter says, “ Yes, my lord,” quite unconsciously. 
They are in a cab. They arrive at Chiswick; at 
the door of The House. 

“ Behold,” says Edmond, as Mr. Bridgewater 
opens the door; “ behold the cook! ” 

Mr. Bridgewater perceives the situation as a 
good curtain to a first act. He does not question 
or argue, but discovers at the back of his brain 
some once-learned French. 

“Comment vous portez-vous ? Bong?” he 

says. 

She gives him a wide wholesome smile, dis- 
playing magnificent teeth. 

“ Je suis tres bien, merci, Monsieur.” 

She conquers him at once. Mr. Bridgewater 
does not accept her, she adopts him. 

In the kitchen she is all smiles again. u It is 
beautiful.” 

The three children — what else — are delighted. 

And that very evening Edmond dines upon the 


Servants to a Ghost 175 

Omelette, a delicious Ragout, and a Salad that 
might make History. 

After dinner he raises his glass of port and 
looks at Mr. Bridgewater. 

“ Well? ” he says. 

“ Mr. Falconer, sir,” says the butler, “ if you 
will pardon the expression, I feel we have struck 
oil.” 

“ I suppose we are a little ridiculous, Mr. 
Bridgewater? ” 

“ This is better than life,” says Mr. Bridge- 
water. “ It is just unreal enough to seem per- 
fectly true.” 

“A glass of port? Sit down, Mr. Bridge- 
water.” 

Mr. Bridgewater shakes his head. “ In my 
pantry, sir, if you will honour me. But not here.” 

“ Why not? ” says Edmond, laughing. 

“ It’s not in the part,” says Mr. Bridgewater 
solemnly. 

3 . — How he met the Young Person 

It is all very well to have a fine French cook, 
and a perfect butler, but there are stairs to be 
done and brass to be polished, and china and 
books to be dusted. Marie Louise shone at clean- 
liness; she and her kitchen looked equally pol- 
ished, and she worked with unceasing vigour at 
The House. But it was a big house and fas- 


176 St. Quill 

tidious and required much hard work to keep it 
clean. 

One day, about six months after the advent of 
Marie Louise, when Edmond was pacing the 
garden indulging in the reconstruction of a chap- 
ter of Pamela’s life, Mr. Bridgewater approached 
him with an air of great mystery. 

“ I have found a young female,” he said, as 
if he had found her behind a gooseberry bush. 

“ A woman? ” said Edmond. “ What for? ” 

“ We spoke, Mr. Falconer, sir, of a little help.” 

“Oh! For the house. Good. Where is 
she?” 

“ At present, sir, she is in the bath.” 

“What!” cried Edmond. “In the bath? 
What on earth is she doing in the bath? ” 

“ Marie Louise,” said Mr. Bridgewater, “ is 
superintending the removal of superfluous dirt.” 

“ Out with it,” said Edmond. “ Let’s have no 
more mystery. Who is she? Where did you find 
her? ” 

Mr. Bridgewater tapped his forehead signifi- 
cantly. “ A little he hinted. 

“ Do you mean to tell me you have hired an 
idiot to look after my things? Disgraceful. 
Send her away at once.” 

He was moving rapidly towards the house when 
he was stopped by the vision of Marie Louise, 
beaming from ear to ear as she half pushed a girl 
towards him. She appeared to be about eighteen, 


Servants to a Ghost 177 

and had most wonderful red hair, but her face, 
now shining with soap, was thin and pinched so 
that she looked starved. 

“ Well,” said Edmond angrily, “ what does all 
this mean? ” 

The girl seemed to shrink from him, and 
plucked nervously at the skirt belonging to Marie 
Louise, which she was wearing. 

“ The poor soul,” said Marie Louise, pushing 
the terrified girl. “ She starves, so I ask her, I 
say, ‘ Do you wish to work? ’ And she say, ‘ Oh 
— yes.’ So I take her in and wash her, and here 
she is.” 

“Do you speak French, then?” asked Ed- 
mond. 

The girl nodded. 

“What are you?” 

Suddenly she sank on her knees before him and 
held up her hands in supplication. “ Don’t send 
me away. I shall die,” she pleaded. “ I will 
work all day for you — I swear I will. Don’t send 
me away.” 

“ Come, come,” said Edmond kindly. “ Don’t 
kneel. If you are in trouble nobody will hurt 
you. Tell us, what are you? ” 

She rose from her knees and went clos'e to him, 
looking into his face. “ I am quite good,” she 
said earnestly. “ But I have starved. J am a 
model. I got ill this summer when I was sitting 
to — to a man in France. He took me there — 


St. Quin 


i 7 8 

and then — then when he had finished the picture 
he — he left me. And I had not any money.” 

“ How did you get here? ” asked Edmond. 

“ I had a few little things,” she said, still look- 
ing straight into his eyes, “ and I sold them and 

came to London. I was ill and I could not ” 

Suddenly she broke down utterly and burst into 
tears. 

“ Is the baby alive? ” said Edmond gently. He 
put a hand on her shoulder. 

She looked up, fear again in her eyes. “ You 
shall not take her from me,” she said passionately. 
“ She is mine. I will work for her, but I will not 
give her up.” 

“ What is your name? ” 

“ It is Elizabeth — need I tell you more? ” 

“ Tell me,” said Edmond, “ why did you come 
here?” 

“ I was wandering about, wondering what to 
do, when I saw your little gate in the lane, and I 
pushed it and it opened, and then I saw this 
Frenchwoman, and before I could go away she 
spoke to me. She said, 1 You look hungry.’ And 
then I think I fainted.” 

All this time Marie Louise stood behind the 
girl beaming. She looked just like a big kind dog 
who had found something and brought it to the 
feet of her master. Mr. Bridgewater stood be- 
hind Edmond with much the air of being judge 
in a case of life and death. 


Servants to a Ghost 


179 


“ She has told me,” said Marie Louise. “ So 
I feed her and wash her and take away her rags, 
and she is here.” 

Edmond stopped to think. His hobby was de- 
veloping into large proportions, and now here 
came a winsome child and a baby who drifted 
into the scheme. And while he was thinking the 
voice of Mariette spoke in his heart, saying, 
u Raoul, dear, she must be looked after. She 
must bring the baby here.” 

“ Elizabeth,” said Edmond, “ where is this 
child?” 

“ Mr. Falconer, sir! ” Mr. Bridgewater began. 

“ Wait. You have managed to live somehow.” 

“ When I came out of the hospital I got a few 
sittings, and so I lived for a time. But now I 
am so thin they do not want me. She is called 
Fifine; it was in a book I was reading. Must 
I go?” 

Her eyes would have melted the stoniest of 
hearts. 

“ Marie Louise,” said Edmond; “ do you think 
you could do with a baby in the house? ” 

“ Ah,” she cried. “ Did I not say so? I say 
to her, 4 My dear, it is all right, we shall do 
something. He is so kind and good.’ Mon Dieu! 
but I shall love the little one.” 

“ Mr. Bridgewater? ” 

“ I confess I am partial to infants,” said he. 

“ Then, Elizabeth ” Edmond began. 


i8o 


St. Quin 


“You will take me — and Fifine — here?” she 
said incredulously. 

“ It seems that Marie Louise has decided.” 

For an instant it seemed she was going to 
speak, but the tears held her voice, and she could 
find no words. She turned away tremblingly, 
bowed her head, and put out her arms blindly to 
Marie Louise. 

So it happened that in a few days’ time a red- 
haired maid in a Georgian dress of flowered lav- 
ender cotton was to be seen dusting Pamela’s 
bedroom when Edmond went into it. 

He had been away with Felicity for three days, 
but he had left orders that Elizabeth was to copy 
as well as she could the dress in a print hanging 
on the stairs. 

A smiling, happy face met his, and a voice of 
joy wished him “ Good afternoon.” 

“ And Fifine? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, she won’t bother you, I promise.” 

“ Ought I to see Fifine? ” 

Down went duster, and off went Elizabeth to 
return in a few moments with a fat and smiling 
baby. 

He bent over the rosy mystery and held one 
finger out. Instantly a fat hand came trustingly 
out, and fat, dimpled fingers closed over his. 

“ So this is Fifine,” he said, smiling. 

“Isn’t she beautiful?” 

“ Curious things,” said Edmond. 


Servants to a Ghost 


181 

“ Isn’t she fat? ” said Elizabeth. 

“We must get you fat, too.” 

Their eyes met across the child, and he said 
suddenly, “ Where were you educated? ” 

“ In a convent in France,” she answered. 

“An orphan?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ It’s an odd world, isn’t it? ” 

“ I want to thank you,” she began hastily. 
“ You have ” 

“ Not a word,” he answered. “ You have 
thanked me tremendously.” 

“ Me!” 

“ Yes. No child has ever held my finger be- 
fore. It — it does one good.” 

“ It is very wonderful, isn’t it? Somehow I’m 
not sorry.” 

“ No. Somehow I’m not sorry either.” 

Now this, you know, is not quite the way to 
talk to a housemaid. But if your housemaid 
looks like a beautiful picture and dusts a ghost’s 
bedroom, and has a fat baby, the conventions 
get so mixed that it is better to ignore them alto- 
gether. 


CHAPTER XVII 


AN ANGEL AMONG THE CRITICS 

Number seventeen The Belvedere is full of ex- 
citement, not so full as the little house in Carthar 
Street, though the cause is the same. Hyacinth 
Venn has written a play: that in itself is quite a 
commonplace. But it has been accepted: and not 
by a member of the Caviare Club to be put up 
for one afternoon, but by a real live manager, 
who has given a real live cheque in advance of 
royalties. More than that, the very date is an- 
nounced, and Barbara sees on the hoardings : 

BOHEMIA 

BY 

Hyacinth Venn. 

Edmond’s father, bearing the family blessing 
on work achieved, has consented to sit in a box 
with Edmond, Felicity, and Barbara. 

It is the very night. 

Hyacinth preserves a studied calm. He has 
seen the dress rehearsal; he has supped with his 
182 


An Angel among the Critics 183 

actor-manager; he has received countless tele- 
grams; he is sick of the sound of his own words. 
And — he is very much afraid of his own work. 

So is Edmond. He thinks it will be one of 
those melancholy plays exposing the hypocrisy 
of middle-class life, that it will be a series of 
“ slices of life ” in ugly rooms where sordid peo- 
ple glory in their sordidness. Just such a play 
as would come out of Carthar Street. 

Edmond is a Romantic, just as Venn is a Real- 
ist. However, here is Scarlet with his dress- 
clothes, and Felicity is being put into a creation. 
One gets through these times. 

The story of the play is a secret. The para- 
graphs announce it to be a Comedy, and then go 
on to allude to the work Venn has done, his 
slightly morbid earlier work, and to gather what 
they may from that source. 

Barbara is divided between two ideas, the one 
f as to how she shall comfort Hyacinth if the play 
is a failure, the other in wondering what they 
shall do if it is a success. 

The silent, respectful servants waiting on the 
little dinner party at number seventeen know all 
about it. They are real playgoers, and like some- 
thing full of heart and heroism. They know Mr. 
Venn, and do not think he looks like an author. 
But they know that a play at “ The Duke’s The- 
atre ” must have something to recommend it. 
They listen to the dinner-table conversation, and 


184 St- Quin 

glean what news they can for downstairs gossip 
afterwards. 

Venn himself is excused. He has a thousand 
things to attend to. Fie will be at the back, in 
the wings. The party is infected with the unusual 
excitement. A first night is nothing, but when the 
play reflects on the credit of the family, things 
take a different aspect. 

Maria, Duchess of Nonsuch, is of the party; 
she and the Duke are also sitting in a box. The 
Duchess, who is a theatre terror, for she will ask 
questions in a loud voice, does not think she will 
care for the play. 

“ I like those musical things,” she says, “ with 
no plot and a loud orchestra. I like red noses, 
and the funny man. Don’t you, Mr. St. Quin? ” 

Mr. St. Quin, the elder, admits to the fact that 
he sees very few plays. * He makes the usual re- 
mark about being a country cousin. He cared for 
Irving years ago, and has known a circus to be 
entertaining. 

Felicity understands that this is a serious play. 

“ Then I shall go to sleep,” says the Duchess. 
“ I always sleep at those plays where advanced 
females become religious after running away with 
somebody’s husband. They always begin in a 
drawing-room and then go to Switzerland.” 

“ They are supposed to be like life,” says Ed- 
mond. 

“ Well, I know nothing about life,” she an- 


An Angel among the Critics 185 

swers, laughing. “ I want to be made to laugh. 
It does me good. Nonsuch hates laughing, don’t 
you? ” 

“ I prefer a constant ripple to a burst of guf- 
faws,” says the Duke. 

“ Well, Barbara? ” says Felicity. 

“ I’m frightened,” she answers. “ I do so want 
it to go well. But it is very fantastic, I’m afraid.” 

“ Then it is at least like life,” says the Duke. 

“ Do you think so,” Felicity says. “ I find life 
so set out and level, like a chess problem. I don’t 
believe fantastic things happen.” 

“ You read the papers,” says the Duke. 

“ I’m afraid I only glance at them.” 

Then, to everybody’s surprise, Edmond breaks 
in with a defence of the fantastic idea. “ Think 
of this city we live in, with its thousands of queer 
trades and odd secrets. Think of the great burg- 
lars at their night work, and the whole detective 
service at watch day and night. Take the numer- 
ous religions and their services and aims. The 
whole play going on round us all the time. Things 
we never think happen, such as people whose lives 
are in danger walking about disguised. Think 
of opium dens where Chinamen quarrel over 
games of fan-tan. It is all an arabesque of most 
complicated and fantastic design. But, of course, 
we are so hedged in that we don’t see it, only read 
of it.” 

Felicity looks at her husband with surprise. 


St. Quin 


1 86 

She does not know he ever felt like this. Her 
friend, the painter, might talk like that, but Ed- 
mond ! Perhaps she did not know him. 

Motor-cars at the door of number seventeen, 
and at many doors in The Belvedere. It is a 
fashionable first night, and people will bow to 
one another all over the house. The stalls and 
boxes will be full of splendidly groomed people 
all ready to be bored, in which spirit they go. 
And there will be the critics, those case-hardened 
people, all ready to find faults and pick holes, 
and, in truth, just as ready to praise the Good 
Thing. 

Everybody hopes it will be amusing. 

There is a block of carriages in Piccadilly. 
Through those houses and shops and hotels, ris- 
ing like grey cliffs on either side, the stream of 
wealth and poverty, misery and content, pours 
ceaselessly on. 

A motor-omnibus has broken down, and a little 
black throng of people stop on the pavement to 
watch the man trying to start it again. Behind 
this is the motor-car of the Duke of Nonsuch. 
People peer into the windows and say to one an- 
other: “ That is the Duke, there, that old, good- 
looking gentleman.” Policemen with shining 
capes — for there has been a slight shower — stand, 
arms up, regulating the traffic. Dull lights, like 
molten gold, shine from shop windows, and silver 
lights from electric standards flicker on the wet 


An Angel among the Critics 187 

pavements. And all the while there is that great 
booming noise like the hum of a gigantic ant heap, 
the sound of a city alive with people. 

The curtain goes up. 

The curtain comes down. 

Edmond has watched Felicity all the time from 
the back of the box. She looks wonderfully beau- 
tiful, and the tears have shone in her eyes. With 
her fairness and beautiful face she looks like some 
picture of a Society angel sitting in the crowd of 
critics. She is openly moved. The house has 
been surprised and touched at the exquisite feel- 
ing of the play. It has been full of spring, and 
youth, and hopefulness, and is full of subtle hu- 
mour and quick wit. It is designed to show that 
life is not what it appears to the Realist Modern 
School, all sombre, sordid, and canting. 

It has spoken straight to Felicity’s heart, spoken 
her dumb thoughts. Could she do as did the 
woman in the play, then there lay the chance of 
escape. It was her picture put into words, and 
stirred up old thoughts of a simpler life where 
she could be happy and free. 

Edmond’s father understands it well. But it 
seems to him that one does not open the heart so 
much in a public place. It is almost indecent to 
show so much tenderness. He feels the sacred 
stronghold of his heart violated. 

The Duchess of Nonsuch suddenly remembers 
that she used to climb trees when she was a girl. 


1 88 St. Quin 

The Duke feels twenty, and remembers his first 
poem being printed. 

A great many noodle-headed gentlemen in the 
stalls think the whole thing awful rot, and dash 
off to get a little drunk at supper. 

But the curious and fantastic thing is that quite 
a dozen critics melt and write long notices about 
the play in such glowing terms that their editors 
wonder what has happened to these very, very 
clever gentlemen who generally hate anything at 
all fantastic. 

Was it that they were infected by the deep 
feeling of Felicity in her box? Why not? 

She passed through the crowd of pushing peo- 
ple in the entrance hall, and men whisper: 
“ That’s a beautiful woman; who is she? ” And 
the clever, knowing ones whisper back: “ She’s 
that odd chap St. Quin’s wife.” 

And when she puts up her face to be kissed 
that night tears suddenly start into her eyes, so 
that Edmond says: “ Over-tired? ” And she 
says: “ Headache.” And it is heartache. 

When her maid is putting her to bed her 
thoughts dwell all the time on the emotion roused 
by Venn’s play. She seems to take off conventions 
as her jewels are put away, and bit by bit the 
elaborate toilet is removed. Her maid is brush- 
ing her hair. 

“ I think I could be happy in the country,” says 
Felicity suddenly. 


An Angel among the Critics 189 

“ Pardon, Madame.” 

“ Have you ever felt you want to get away, 
right away, and wear old clothes, and get thor- 
oughly wet, and walk through the mist on the 
moors? ” 

“ Madame forgets I am not English.” 

“ But don’t you sometimes get sick of this? ” 

Then Julie confesses to a longing to see Paris 
again. 

“ And what do you do there? ” 

It is a late, a witching hour of night. Perhaps 
Julie is infected with her mistress’s spirit. 

“ I go to my sister, who has a little apartment, 
and we eat at a little restaurant, and go on 
the steamers, and in the gardens. It is very 
simple.” 

“ It is very simple— yes, but it sounds very 
jolly” 

“ It would not be jolly for Madame. She 
would be oh, so bored.” 

“ I wonder.” 

“ There is no Society, nothing but just my sis- 
ter and me.” 

“ And no young man, Julie? ” 

Julie is coiling the beautiful hair, ready to put 
it under the lace night-cap. She answers softly: 
“ Per-’aps there might come a young man, 
Madame.” 

The hair is finished, the dressing-jacket re- 
moved. Felicity stands in her night-gown before 


190 St. Quin 

the long mirror. She is big, fine, strong, like a 
beautiful rose. 

“ In a month’s time you shall go to Paris,” she 
says, “ and I shall go away all by myself, and 
live in a cottage, and eat pints of cream, and walk 
miles, and see no one.” 

“ Does Madame take a rest cure? ” 

“ I want to feel the real wind, and the real 
rain, and the real sun. I don’t want to criticise 
life any longer, I want to live it.” 

“ Madame might get bored.” 

“ I wonder,” says Felicity. “ I wonder if I’ve 
forgotten how to be simple.” 

The lights are out, the house is silent. In her 
dreams she walks in old clothes across the moors. 
She knows she is going to meet a man who will 
make all the difference in her life. He is standing 
facing the sea waiting for her. He turns; she 
gives a cry. “ Teddy, you? ” And wakes to find 
him in the room. 

“ You cried out,” he says, “ just as I was pass- 
ing the door.” 

“ Only a dream,” she answers. “ Good night, 
dear.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

A SEPTEMBER SPIRIT 

In September Felicity announced nerves; a con- 
venient doctor, who had been told what to say, 
decided upon a Rest Cure — quite alone. The 
cottage on the moor was taken, and Felicity de- 
parted. 

The Belvedere had a blank expression, like 
some gigantic creature asleep. From one to 
thirty-one the blinds were down; here and there 
an open window below stairs or in the topmost 
stories showed that watchful guardians presided 
over the empty rooms. No desert is so desolate 
as a big drawing-room in covers, and all the big 
drawing-rooms were earning their out-of-season 
repose. 

Edmond had given out that he might spend 
two weeks at his home, and for the rest potter 
about, stay in town, or go off somewhere, just 
as the spirit moved him. 

London was given over to strange groups of 
people, who stood about opposite places of inter- 
est consulting guide-books. Clubs were given 
over to the perpetual and aged club-livers, a few 
young men stranded in London by work, and the 
191 


192 ' St. Quin 

occasional bursting in and out of brown-faced 
gentlemen, whose bags filled the halls. 

Edmond had The House at Chiswick to him- 
self for a fortnight. It was a fortnight of de- 
licious make-believe, culminating in the astound- 
ing incident now about to be related. 

By crossing the lane at the foot of the garden 
one could open another door that led on to a 
strip of garden running down to the river. Here 
were a summer-house, a few flowering shrubs, and 
a plot of grass. N 

One evening before dinner Edmond was sitting 
in the summer-house smoking a long churchwarden 
pipe, a copy of “ The Rape of the Lock ” lay by 
his side, together with a silver tankard half full 
of beer. He wore a long brown coat with full 
skirts, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes. As he 
sat thinking, the opposite banks of the river 
wreathed themselves in exquisite blue mist as the 
sun coloured the sky and river a dull orange. The 
romantic mystery of the evening, the lapping of 
the water on the garden steps, the quiet and peace 
of everything caused dreamy thoughts and poetic 
ideas to fill Edmond’s mind. He had that day 
written a set of verses round the idea of Hogarth 
sitting under his mulberry tree, which still flour- 
ished in a garden not far away. 

As the sky darkened Edmond got up, and, go- 
ing down to the steps, stood there watching the 
river hide in the mist. A chill breeze struck across 


A September Spirit 193 

the water, and it had, or seemed to have, an 
ominous message. 

From the steps he could see on his right hand 
the piece of waste ground next to his garden. It 
was a forlorn and desolate patch, railed in by old 
rusty railings full of gaps, and covered with 
weeds, stones, and the remains of a ship’s capstan. 
As he looked into this dreary, deserted spot he 
saw the broken gate pushed open and a figure, 
obscured by the darkness, pass into the place. As 
this figure approached he saw that it was a woman 
wearing a heavy veil, and dressed in black. 

There was something so forlorn and pitiful 
about the figure that he felt his heart drawn out 
in sympathy for one who should choose to wander 
among the weeds and stones. It was as if the 
woman felt herself a part of the broken place, as 
if she might be the spirit of the melancholy Sep- 
tember evening. 

She sat down on the stone by the capstan, and, 
resting her chin in the cup of her hand, gazed out 
into the growing night. 

Feeling that he was prying upon some stran- 
ger’s sorrow or meditation Edmond walked up the 
steps noiselessly, and walked a few steps in the 
direction of the summer-house. Then he heard 
a cry, a soft, low cry like the wail of someone in 
deep agony. And then, startling his senses, and 
filling the air with the note of tragedy, came a loud 
splash in the water. 


St. Quin 


194 

He tore off his coat, ran to the steps, and saw 
the woman struggling in the water. He dived in, 
swam to her, and caught her just as she was sink- 
ing. She tried hard to resist him, but became sud- 
denly quiet and limp. He got her to the steps, 
and carried her up them. Then, crossing the lane 
and rapidly walking to the house, he called loudly 
for Mr. Bridgewater. 

That gentleman, hurrying to the hall, was sur- 
prised to find his master, dripping wet, bending 
over a figure on the long settee. 

“ Oh, Mr. Falconer, sir, what has happened? ” 

“ An accident,” said Edmond. “ Send for 
Elizabeth, and tell her to bring hot blankets, 
brandy, smelling-salts, anything. And quickly, 
please.” 

He had lifted the veil from the woman’s face, 
and found himself looking into a mask of delicate 
beauty, white, with full lips and long black eye- 
lashes. As he looked she stirred a little, and 
opened her eyes. They were deep brown, and 
at the moment filled with horror. 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t hurt me,” she cried. 

“ It’s all right,” said Edmond. u You are with 
friends. No one shall hurt you.” 

She drew a deep breath and sat up. “ I 
don’t know you,” she said. Then, seeing him 
standing there dripping wet, she seemed to re- 
member, passing her hand over her eyes. “ In 
the river,” she said, and he liked the low tone 


i95 


A September Spirit 

of her voice. “ In the river, and you came.” 

She fell back again, exhausted, and closed her 
eyes. 

Elizabeth and Mr. Bridgewater came in with 
brandy and hot water. They gave some to the 
woman, so that a little colour flowed back into 
her cheeks, and then they gave her their arms and 
led her upstairs. 

“ I will wait dinner,” said Edmond. “ When 
she recovers, ask her if she cares to dine with 
me. Let her do just as she likes.” 

He drank some hot brandy and water, and 
went upstairs to change. 

The chill wind rose high, and seemed to beat 
against the windows, crying to be let in. It was 
as if the river had been robbed of a victim, and 
sent the wind howling to get her back. Leaves 
of trees dashed madly against the panes; trees 
bowed and soughed; a roaring filled the big chim- 
ney, and every door rattled. 

In half an hour Edmond, dressed now in a 
plum-coloured suit with ruffles to his wrists, came 
into the dining-room and rang the bell. As he 
stood there in his Georgian clothes, the silver bell 
in his hand, all lit by the golden glow of the can- 
dles on the table, he looked like the first owner 
of the room come to life. Behind him were white 
panelled walls, the fire crackling in the beautiful 
old fireplace, and deep blue curtains drawn across 
the windows. 


196 St. Quin 

Elizabeth entered. She helped the illusion, 
dressed as she was in a claret-coloured stuff dress 
with panniers, a mob-cap, and a little apron. 

“ Poor lady,” she said. “ She is better now.” 

“ Is she a lady? ” said Edmond. 

“ Yes, indeed, she is. And such pretty tjiings, 
but torn and mended. And great weals across 
her back.” 

“What! ” he cried. 

“ Yes, indeed. She must have been beaten ter- 
ribly, poor lady. And so lovely and gentle.” 

“ Is she coming to dinner? ” 

“ She says she will do just as you wish.” 

“ Tell her,” said Edmond, “ that she can dine 
here or in her own room, just as she pleases. By 
the way, which room is she in? ” 

“ She is in the big room, because that was quite 
ready. We lit the fire, and made her quite com- 
fortable.” 

“ In the big room? In ? ” 

“ In Mistress Pamela’s room. Isn’t that 
right? ” 

“ It does not matter for to-night,” he said. “ I 
will dine now.” 

Standing before the fire, he wondered what was 
the story of this poor soul driven to that act of 
desperation. Beaten, dead of spirit, she had sum- 
moned up her mind for one supreme act, and only 
chance — was it a good or evil chance? — had 
brought him in at the last moment. 


A September Spirit 197 

Mr. Bridgewater, full of the drama of the sit- 
uation, announced that the lady would come down 
to dinner. He then closed the door, and coughed 
discreetly behind his hand. 

“You have something to say, Mr. Bridge- 
water? ” said Edmond. 

“ May I say, Mr. Falconer, sir, that this young 
lady might be a disturbing influence. She is very 
pretty, and pretty young ladies are rather well 
known. I mean a disappearance might be 
marked, and things might be awkward, questions 
asked, and then good-bye to our peace here.” 

“ I hear she is bruised and ill,” said Edmond. 
“ Would you have me turn her out? ” 

The wind hurled itself against the house, mak- 
ing the shutters rattle, and filling the old place 
with strange moanings. A broken branch hit one 
of the windows, cracking like a whip across the 
panes. 

“ On a night like this? ” said Edmond. 

“ No, Mr. Falconer, not to-night, of course, 
but to-morrow. I should consider it, sir.” 

“ Some poor soul comes by chance into our 
keeping, Mr. Bridgewater. We must do our best 
to help her.” 

There came a sound on the stairs that made 
Edmond’s heart beat, made Mr. Bridgewater 
start and look up. It was the sound of high-heeled 
shoes pattering on the stairs. 

Mr. Bridgewater opened the door, and they 


198 St. Quin 

heard Elizabeth’s voice say: “ This way, if you 
please.” 

Then, framed by the white doorway, a figure 
came, clothed in a flowered silk, wearing white 
shoes with red heels, with her black hair tied back 
with a blue ribbon; with a white face, and great 
dark, wondering eyes. If he had not seen the 
face before Edmond would have thought that the 
ghost of his dreams, Pamela, stood before him. 

“ They have been so kind,” she said in her low, 
rich voice. “ And my clothes were not dry, so 
they gave me these.” 

As she said this she drew a step back, puzzled. 
There stood a Georgian gentleman in a powdered 
wig with a big black bow, his hands half covered 
with a creamy fall of lace. There stood a digni- 
fied butler in full Georgian clothes. And the 
room with its white panels and gleaming silver, 
its candles in sconces, the old pictures on the walls, 
made her wonder if indeed she could have died 
and returned to a world of two hundred years 
ago. 

“ Will you sit here, please,” said Edmond, as 
Mr. Bridgewater drew out a chair. 

She came forward hesitatingly, sat down, and 
then suddenly put out her hand. 

“ Thank you,” she said slowly. “ I don’t 
understand. I’m a little dazed — but, thank you.” 

Elizabeth brought in the soup. 


A September Spirit 199 

“ I want you to understand,” said Edmond, as 
soon as the servants left the room, “ that you 
need tell me nothing — or everything — just as you 
like. I will tell you this. Regard this house 
as something out of the world, a haven of 
refuge for those whom Society, of any kind, has 
broken or ill used. Live here as long as you 
like.” 

“ But,” she began, “ you don’t know me.” 

“ And you,” he answered, “ do not know me. 
Would you like to make it a bargain that we need 
never know one another?” 

“ It is so strange,” she said. 

“ It is no stranger than most of life. You can 
be mistress of this house, where I am but a 
servant.” 

“ You are not a servant,” she answered. 

“ I am the servant to an idea I have built up,” 
said Edmond. “ Just as some evil fate has been 
your master. Listen to the storm outside, it is 
crying with the million voices of London, its high- 
ways and by-ways, mean streets and lanes of pal- 
aces all cry in the wind. You heard it, and it 
seemed an evil whisper — or did it seem like the 
undertone of some suggestion, a voice whispering 
to you — ‘ the river ’? It sings of the poor frozen 
souls all huddled in their rags, dripping wet, on 
the Embankment; of women earning starvation 
wages by the light of flickering candles; of men 
walking about in soul-agony. The sorrow of Lon- 


200 St. Quin 

don is greater than your sorrow or mine. Have 
some sherry? ” 

“ I was at the end of everything,” she said. 

“ Yet here is a new beginning.” 

“ You, too, have suffered? ” she asked, 

“ I live in an artificial world where we swim 
round and round a glass bowl like gold-fish. We 
are hemmed in by all the things that do not make 
life worth living, and yet are the aim and object 
of all strife, hard work, and fighting. We rich 
people are in revolt just as often as are the poor. 
Your clerk loathes his stool, his stupid suburban 
home, the unutterable monotony of things. What 
does he do before London breaks him body and 
soul? He takes up a new life with the courage 
of a giant, leaves all solid things behind him, and 
goes off to the Colonies or America with that fine 
spirit of adventure that made Columbus, Drake, 
Frobisher, and half a thousand others. 

“ And we? ” she asked. 

He looked at her quickly. The question gave 
him an insight at once into her surroundings. She 
sat opposite to him so naturally, with such an air 
of good, fine breeding that, at first, he wondered 
at Elizabeth’s words of the torn and mended 
garments. 

“We,” he answered, “have so much to con- 
sider. We think of our families — I do not mean 
our children — but of the good name it has taken 
centuries to build up. We are lazy, except when 


201 


A September Spirit 

it does not matter. In fact, we are fat — that is 
it. We are hideously fat. We are so fat that we 
cannot see the stars or the daisies.” 

Elizabeth came in with the fish. 

“ I am married,” she said. 

“ So am I,” said Edmond. 

She gave him a quick look of sympathy. 

“ Oh, no,” he said, answering it. “ I am not 
unhappily married, don’t think that. My wife is 
a sweet woman, given over to the creed of her up- 
bringing. She has a soul as pure and good as a 
flower, but her mind is a Society Calendar. Just 
now she has nerves. It is the fashion. Next 
month she will have whatever disease is the rage. 
She likes what her world likes, and leaves each 
last favourite in the dust. Her dressmakers alter 
her figure, her walk, and her choice of colour. 
Her maid changes the fashion of her hair: when 
it is worn in the Grecian style she wears it so; 
when we are all for straight fringes she suddenly 
appears in one. But she is very pleasant, and 
most amiable.” 

“ Do you think you understand her? ” she 
asked. 

“ Some women have no secrets,” he answered. 
“ I can see all she is in the shop-windows as I walk 
down here. I can see their false hair, their silk 
stockings, every article of clothing they wear 
shamelessly exposed. All the doll’s outfit. Sud- 


202 


St. Quin 

denly, don’t you know, the best shop-window is 
full of huge bags. I go home — there is a huge 
bag. Suddenly the best shop-window has little 
tiny gold purses. I find a little tiny gold purse at 
home. Their minds are the same: music, danc- 
ing, painting, acting, all have their fashionable 
exponents, whom they follow.” 

“ But she is beautiful, perhaps? ” 

“ She is as beautiful as wax fruit. Another 
glass of claret? ” 

Elizabeth brought in a dish of cutlets. 

“ You ask me nothing about myself,” she said. 

“ Would it help you to tell me? ” 

“ I want to forget.” 

“ Then forget,” said Edmond. “ You see that 
I have surrounded myself with the fancies of an- 
other century.” 

“ I have been wondering,” she said. 

“ The very clothes you are wearing were worn 
once by some lady of past ages, a lady who might 
have bowed to Fielding, or seen David Garrick.” 

“ But the servants? ” 

“ You shall hear all about them. Tell me, did 
you want to die? ” 

“ I don’t know,” she answered. “ I didn’t 
want to live. A man married me for my money, 
and spent it. I was supposed to be very romantic 
as a girl, and I was fed by well meaning, but 
stupid, kind people, on romantic ideas. So I ran 


A September Spirit 203 

away when I was eighteen with a very handsome 
man. At least, I thought so then.” 

“ And life has been very hard on you.” 

She spoke passionately, quickly, with a hoarse 
note in her voice. “ I don’t think men know what 
the mind of an innocent girl is. There is nothing 
more sensitive, or shrinking, or beautiful. I had 
a room like a nun’s cell, white, and clean, and 
pure. I was very religious, morbidly so, I think, 
and had pretty rosaries which I didn’t use, and 
pictures of saints whose lives I never really knew. 
I ran away from it all with this man, and I was 
stunned by evil. He excited and interested me, 
and I went headlong into his life. And then, one 
day, my soul awoke in me and cried out. I 
loathed myself.” 

“ And then? ” 

“ I want to forget. I found myself by the 
river. I think I meant to go there with some 
idea that I could finish everything. — It seems so 
strange to be sitting here.” 

“ In another century.” 

“ Yes, as if someone had taken a sponge and 
washed away the world I knew. I suppose I 
ought to feel more, but I think all feeling is dead 
in me. Are you shocked that I am enjoying my 
dinner? ” 

“ If you were not I think Marie Louise 
would be.” 

“ Marie Louise is your cook? ” 


204 


St. Quin 


“ She is a great deal more than a cook, she’s 
an adventure, and she mothers me when she can. 
I am not Very often here. You see, I live both 
lives.” 

“ Does your wife know? ” 

Edmond laughed. “ She would think I was 
mad. She wouldn’t understand it a bit, not a 
bit.” 

The woman was suddenly grave. “ Am I 
rather a problem? ” she asked. 

“Not in the least. You mean, hpw could I 
explain your presence here. I shall’ never have 
to. Even if I did have to, it wouldn’t matter. 
Things smooth themselves out, if you give them 
time.” 

u You must eat some of this,” said Edmond. 
“ This is a very particular casserole dish of Marie 
Louise’s.” 

She ate a little, and began to talk to him of 
the house. “ Everything is very complete,” she 
said. “ It is so — what shall I say — ready.” 

“You like it?” 

“ I seem to feel I have been here in a dream. 
Do you know places that give you that impression : 
corners of streets, gardens, the beginnings of con- 
versation? But this house, somehow, makes me 
feel curiously at home.” 

“ Do you understand these things? ” he asked. 

“ I love old things,” she said. “ I love them 


A September Spirit 205 

because other people must have loved them. In 
my rather lonely life lately I have often thought 
about that legacy of love people leave behind. 
Someone must have loved that sideboard, the 
mirror in it reflects such a quaint picture of this 
room, just such a room as it might have reflected 
before. One gets to think of things, not of peo- 
ple, when one is unhappy. I’ve had such a good 
dinner, and I have nearly died, yet all I can think 
of is this house and the new thing that has hap- 
pened to rne. Am I callous? ” 

“ You are only truthful,” he answered. “ Now 
I live in an atmosphere of little lies. Lies that say 
only the ugly side of the real thing. We are 
scavengers who live on the peccadilloes of our 
friends — the ‘ What do you think I’ve heard 
about the Browns?’ And if it is anything good 
we suppress it. I think we are really pleased if 
some unfortunate woman does something for love 
which she wouldn’t do for money. That is be- 
cause w T e do everything for money. I am not bit- 
ter, really, but Fate has made me rather a cynic.” 
“ And a great sentimentalist.” 

“ So you have discovered that,” he said. 

“ A woman,” she answered, “ has two pairs of 
eyes; with one she looks at herself, with the other 
she looks for herself — what she is, and what she 
finds of herself in other people. You must have 
a lot of woman in you, and by that I mean a lot 
of me.” 


206 


St. Quin 


“ Not an hour ago you were nearly drowning.” 

“ Do you know what I thought of? I thought 
of a dress I wore at a garden party when I was 
twelve. The water sang songs of my childhood 
in my ears, songs of the time when I was happy.” 

^ “ When I was fond of games,” he said, “ and 

knew nothing about cooking, I thought everything 
was splendid to play, and everything was good to 
eat. My cynicism came in with a knowledge of 
claret.” 

“ Love is a very curious thing,” she answered. 

“ Why do you say that? ” 

“ Because you talk of cynicism. I should say 
you were a great-hearted person. You bought 
these chairs because you loved them.” 

“ I liked them.” 

“ Love needs possession.” 

“ Isn’t that greed? ” 

“ Greed needs acquirement. It’s not the same 
thing.” 

He leaned forward as Elizabeth brought in 
some apple fritters. “ You fit this place so per- 
fectly,” he said, “ and I must call you something.” 

“ My name ” she began hesitatingly. 

“ No, no, don’t tell me. Your name is Pa- 
mela.” 

“ Pamela,” she said. “Why?” 

And when they were drinking their coffee he 
told her. 


CHAPTER XIX 


CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED 
ANSWERS 

To be alone, and to be solitary are two very dif- 
ferent things. Alone on a wide sweep of moor- 
land, or in a little boat at sea, one can tune one’s 
nature to the glorious uplift of the big, free 
breath of simplicity we call Nature. The rocks 
and heather call, the sky and sea meet in an end- 
less song; birds, beasts, and fishes join in a com- 
plete and wonderful harmony. The mind, seeking 
refreshment, runs in tune to bees among the 
heather, to the cluck of black-cock, the rippling 
voice of upland streams. One is alone, but one is 
not lonely. The great big games of Nature are 
played before one’s eyes; cloud shadows chase 
cloud shadows, endless pictures of light and shade 
are painted by the sun, waves roll over, splashing 
merrily, barley shivers and oats laugh as the wind 
tickles the fields, and wheat waves ceremoniously 
as befits the staff of life. 

But to be solitary and in such surroundings is 
to know only the fears and doubts that trouble the 
deep waters of the soul. That majestic passage 
207 


208 


St. Quin 


from birth to death, during which all good and 
all evil things are shown, seems like a frightened 
run from unknown dangers lurking and terrible. 
There are night fears and day fears, Nature 
frowns and terrifies. The hills loom up with 
crushing power and forces, the sea rumbles and 
cries for victims for its silent depths. 

The diseases of the imagination are more 
potent and awe-inspiring than those ills that at- 
tack the body. One feels petty, mean, a worm; 
something blind that cannot see the powers that 
come to crush. 

At first Felicity feared herself more than she 
knew. She thought it was the silence of the 
moors, but it was the silence of her heart waiting 
for an answer to the question it had put. The 
question was this: u What are you doing with 
your life? ” 

She did not know, but seated on a high tor 
with the rim of the world round her she came 
face to face with the problem of herself. 

The faithful Messrs. Marston and Fenning 
had supplied correct country clothes, the approved 
heather mixture rough coats and skirts, the leather 
buttons and great big pockets. Messrs. Cranbury 
and Sons had sold her the very boots with nails 
and leather laces; Madame Pompelour had pro- 
vided three charming hats, floppety and dun col- 
oured with trimmings of wild birds’ breasts. But 
when Felicity walked alone on the moor she may 


209 


Cros9-questions 

have done credit to her tailor, but she certainly 
did not do credit to the greater tailoring of Na- 
ture herself. 

She knew herself to be small and artificial. She 
felt terribly of the town, and when she walked to 
a height from whence she could see the big prison 
on the moor in the distance she felt that she might 
possibly be more at home among that crowd of 
pitiful humanity than exposed to the ruthless at- 
tacks of the solitudes about her. 

The prison and its surroundings made a fine 
ironical picture. It is one of those pictures a 
cynical civilisation loves to paint, just as it sucks 
the country into the towns, leaving here and there 
fine old trees to become smoke-grimed, and en- 
closes open heaths and imprisons forests and calls 
them Pleasure Grounds. 

At the very gates of the prison freedom calls 
in her most seductive voice; trout-streams babble 
and wild birds cry, the moor rolls away in a carpet 
of heather and grass and rich red earth. And by 
dew-ponds and streams, by open roads and bosky 
dells warders walk on their holiday, free men in 
the garb of the jail. 

Because the prison resembled a town Felicity 
was at first drawn to it. She sat and pondered 
the lives of the inmates whom she could see here 
and there working under the watchful eyes and 
ready rifles of warders. She knew their feelings, 
she who worked herself under warders whose 


210 


St. Quin 


rifles were the steel shafts of ridicule. As they, 
so she must do the prescribed task. “ How long,” 
said her heart, “ do you care to make your sen- 
tence? ” 

She was a big, fine, beautiful childless woman. 
What place had she in the scheme of things? 
And answer came that she was the toy of fashion, 
a manequin to be dressed and undressed. 

As great health came to her and long walks 
soothed her the terrors of such introspection grew 
less. She determined to change her life where 
she could. Did not Edmond claim and receive 
more freedom? She understood him to indulge 
in a little mild writing, an admission surprised 
out of him when he had been unusually talkative 
one day. She supposed that he had a studio 
or something of the sort where he elaborated 
dull Latin verse, or wrote semi-political ar- 
ticles. But he concerned her only as her chief 
warden. 

And later the hills became her friends, and the 
streams her companions. The countryside gave 
her of its humour, and grim pathos, its silence 
and its song. She began to be acquainted with 
sturdy men and women who called her “ my dee- 
ur ” when they were excited, and chubby children 
went hand-in-hand with her to search for eggs, 
or feed chickens. The postman gave her letters 
on long, lonely roads, the policeman touched his 
helmet as he bicycled past, and the drivers of the 


Cross-questions 21 1 

old-fashioned yellow coaches waved a friendly 
whip at her. 

One day, walking miles away from her cot- 
tage, she came across a splendid young man in the 
ludicrous position of being caught by his own fly. 
In casting, a puff of wind had caught his line, and 
the small hook was firmly fixed in the middle of 
his back. 

He submitted to being unhooked, thanked her 
politely, and began to gather up his tackle, and 
prepare to move on. Felicity, finding herself 
treated in this casual way, was determined he 
should stay. 

“ Have you had any sport? ” she asked. 

The young man remarked curtly that he had 
not. He then became immersed in the mysteries 
of a fly-book rather obviously new. She then 
noticed that all his fishing apparatus was very 
shining and neat and unsoiled. 

“ They say there are plenty of fish,” she said. 

He remarked that all people who let fishing 
said the same thing. 

Finding conversation impossible on these lines 
she was about, to leave when a smothered swear 
made her turn. 

“ I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “ but I’m caught 
in one of the beastly things again.” 

This time he was caught by a tangle from the 
fly-book that had attached itself to his sleeve. 

“ You don’t fish much, do you? ” she ventured. 


212 


St. Quin 


“ I have never fished with a fly-rod before to- 
day,” he answered. 

“ Your things look rather new,” said Felicity. 

Then he laughed suddenly and said, “ I’m a 
bit new myself.” 

Seeing she did not understand he explained. 
“ I thought I ought to take up fishing; it seems 
the thing to do here. Besides, I’ve got such a lot 
I ought to use it somehow. It makes me jolly 
hungry.” 

Felicity looked at the watch on her wrist. “ It’s 
past two. I’ve walked so far, I quite forgot the 
time.” 

“You haven’t grubbed yet?” said the young 
man. 

“ No,” she replied, laughing. “ I have not 
grubbed. Have you?” 

“ I’m just going to.” 

“ Well, I wish you luck of your fishing,” said 
Felicity, turning to go. 

“ I say,” said the young man. “ It would be 
awfully good of you if you’d grub with me.” 

“ I shouldn’t get any lunch till four,” she said 
hesitatingly. 

“ I’ve got the Dickens of a spread up at the 
bridge,” he said. “ I say, I wish you’d come.” 

“ Thanks very much,” said Felicity. 

He gathered up his things and marched on be- 
fore her. She liked his big, strong shoulders and 
the sturdy way in which he walked. He was big 


Cross-questions 213 

and strong and deliciously fresh. And he had an 
open, honest face, deeply tanned. Also, he 
seemed to have a slight American intonation. 

“ It’s awfully decent of you,” he said, over his 
shoulder. 

“ I’m hungry,” said Felicity, smiling. 

“ It’s ripping air,” said the young man. 

At a hidden turn of the stream an old stone 
bridge came into sight, its sides hung with ferns 
that grew between the stones. The stream 
rushed below the arches; a wild tangle of trees, 
bracken, and moss was on either side; in the 
distance a high tor showed purple against the 
sky; everything wild Nature could do to 
make the place wonderfully beautiful she had 
done. 

But standing by the bridge, bursting with im- 
portance, a large blue motor-car stood, its polished 
brass shining in the sun. 

“ That’s my beastly thing,” he said, pointing to 
the car. “ And that,” he said, as a man appeared, 
“ is the bane of my life.” 

They clambered up the steep sides of the bank 
and came out on to the road, where the man met 
them. 

He touched his hat, said, “ I have brought the 
lunch, my lord,” and then looked suspiciously at 
Felicity. A second man in white chauffeur’s 
clothes stood respectfully by the car. 

It seemed to Felicity to finish an idyll charm- 


214 


St. Quin 


ingly begun. The young man looked frowningly 
at his servants and at the large luncheon-basket 
standing in the road. 

“ This is a rotten old place to have lunch,” he 
said, half to himself. 

“Would you prefer it elsewhere, my lord?” 
said the pompous servant. 

“ Look here,” said the young man, quite disre- 
garding Felicity, who was now highly amused. 
“ Look here. Do you see that bit of grass down 
there by the stream? Well, shove the stuff out 
there quickly. Will that do?” he said, turning 
to Felicity. 

“ Splendidly,” she answered. 

“ Just come over here for a moment,” he said, 
walking to the far end of the bridge. And she 
obeyed calmly. “ I say,” he said to her in a low 
voice, “ would you very much mind if I sent all 
that tomfoolery away, so that we could eat in 
peace? ” 

“ Do,” she answered. 

“ Jolly good ! ” he cried, his whole face light- 
ing up. “ Saunders, after you’ve put out the 
lunch just take the car back, and fetch the stuff 
in a couple of hours’ time; nobody will touch it. 
I shall walk home.” 

“ It’s twelve miles, my lord,” said Saunders. 

“ And a half,” said the young gentleman 
gravely. “ Just nip about and get that lunch 
ready.” 


Cross-questions 215 

41 I’m not in the way, I hope,” said Felicity, 
smiling. 

44 Not a bit,” he said in his airy way. “ I hope 
it’s a good lunch. I could eat an ox.” Then he 
called out, “ Saunders, make two cocktails.” 

44 You are taking it very much for granted I 
shall like one,” said Felicity. 

44 You don’t know his cocktails,” he answered. 
“ He’s a master at cocktails. He sends them out 
in a Thermos flask. I often wonder,” he said, 
lowering his voice, “ if Saunders was born in the 
British Museum; he seems to know everything. I 
spend my life trying to catch him out.” 

“And can you?” she asked, infected by his 
spirit. 

44 1 took him out to sea, fishing,” he replied, 
with a gleam in his eyes. “ That cooked him. 
He — well, he was gorgeously sick in a perfectly 
respectful way. I’ve got the sea, at least, to my- 
self.” 

She was puzzled and interested and longed to 
know all about him when they sat down to lunch. 
No one had ever treated her to such an even good 
fellowship before. He took as little notice of her 
femininity as if she had been his sister. His ab- 
solute boyishness was delightful. 

He stood looking at the lunch with an air of 
grave deliberation. 44 Now look at this,” he said. 
“ The chap seems to have known I should meet 
somebody. He’s a perfect demon. Plenty for 


2l6 


St. Quin 


you and me, and a jolly good lunch, too, I think. 
Sit on that rock, that’s the best place. Have 
some caviare? Oh, wait a second, here’s a cock- 
tail; this is yours. Good luck.” 

“ Down she goes,” said Felicity, wondering 
how she found such an answer. 

“ Top hole, Martini,” he said, putting down 
the glasses. “ Caviare, Pie, Salad, Ham and Egg 
Sandwiches. Caviare?” 

“ Thanks,” said Felicity. 

With a grunt and a roar the big car swung out 
of sight, bearing the respectful Saunders. The 
young man looked round and shook his fist after 
them. 

“ Don’t you think,” said Felicity, “ that you 
ought to tell me who you are? ” 

“ I am a perfect ass,” he said gravely, eating 
his caviare. “ And my name is James Andrew 
Slapton, ninth Earl of Postcarrey. And that’s all 
about it.” 

“ But he’s an old, old man,” said Felicity. 

“ You’d better tell me your name,” he an- 
swered. “ I might have to ask you for some- 
thing. I can’t say, ‘ Ha, hum ! will you pass 
the salt?’ I wish you would pass it, by the 
way.” 

“ My name is Felicity St. Quin.” 

He whistled softly. 

“ Does it surprise you?” she asked. 

“ Pve heard of you,” he said. 


Cross-questions 217 

“ Well, I’ve never heard of you,” she answered. 
“ I knew old Lord Postcarrey.” 

u He’s dead. And his two elder brothers are 
dead, and their sons also got absolutely boshed 
in that train accident, so, as my father’s dead, 
here I am, and simply loathing it.” 

“ Why? ” said Felicity. 

“ I was having a fine time before, without a 
bob to bless myself with on a big timber float in 
B. C., when one day up comes a dry old stick to 
the camp and asks to see Mr. Slapton — me. I 
say, you’re not eating.” 

“ Do go on,” said Felicity. 

“ Have some of this pie, pigeon and heaps of 
egg. Good! Well, up comes this chap, and one 
of the boys sings out, 4 Jimmy, you’re wanted.’ 
So I come up, and the old bird says, ‘ I regret to 
inform you that Lord Postcarrey is dead.’ Then 
he gives me the rest of the details, and tells 
me I am the man to step into the old boy’'s 
boots.” 

44 Who was the man? ” she asked. 

44 A nailer. A real sport. He said he was in 
need of a holiday, and as he had always done old 
Postcarrey’s family business he thought he’d come 
out and tell me himself. I tell you, the boys just 
ate him. We opened the best, and at grub that 
night he told us stories of his experiences that 
made us scream. You know — port wine and Stil- 
ton cheese stories and as English as could be. He 


2i8 St. Quin 

carted me along with him, and here I am, bored 
to tears.” 

“ But you are very rich,” said Felicity. 

“ I simply wallow in it,” he answered. “ But, 
you see, I’ve got to learn all the proper things 
now, that’s why you found me making an ass of 
myself with a fly-rod. I haven’t been civilised 
since I was eighteen, and I’m thirty-five now. 
Saunders is hired to coach me. I am now down 
for the M.C.C. and the Athenaeum and White’s. 
I have a racing stable with old Postcarrey’s ani- 
mals in it, and I have several motor-cars I can’t 
use, and more servants than I have ever seen, 
and I want to chuck the whole thing and camp out 
once more in the big forests, and cook my own 
fish and bacon, and hear the boys curse. But 
there you are, I’m caught, and I shall die in my 
coronet of an attack of gout.” He threw up his 
hands. u It’s rather like wiping the nose of a 
timber wolf with a lace handkerchief.” 

“ Don’t get civilised,” she said earnestly. “ It 
isn’t worth it.” 

“ I say,” he said, “ you say that as if you 
meant it.” 

“ I do mean it. I’m civilised.” 

He shook his head, laughing. “ Oh, no, Mrs. 
St. Quin. If you were you wouldn’t be eating 
grub with me here with a large hole in your 
stocking.” 

“ I tore it climbing a wall this morning.” 


219 


Cross-questions 

“ Well, there you are,” he cried triumphantly. 

“ But you don’t know me,” she said. “ I shall 
go away from here in a week and be just a fash- 
ionable doll with nothing to do but the things 
everybody else does.” 

“ Anyhow, we’ve got a week.” 

u What about Saunders?” she asked, laugh- 
ing. 

“ It will be an awful pip in the eye for Saun- 
ders,” he said. “ I say, let’s cook our own lunch 
to-morrow.” 

“ You are a pretty quick young man,” she an- 
swered. “ How do you know I want to come? ” 

“ Your face said yes,” he said. 

“ Well, I do.” 

“ Ripping!” 

“ But don’t forget I’m married.” 

“ I hope he’s a decent chap. You deserve a 
decent chap.” 

“ Why did you whistle when I told you my 
name? ” she asked. 

“ Well,” he said, “ I had heard you were the 
most beautiful woman in London. I’ll lay any 
odds it’s a fact.” 

“ Do you usually pay compliments with a 
sledge-hammer? ” 

“ I say what I mean.” 

“ You are a dangerous young man, Lord Post- 
carrey.” 

“ I say,” he said; “ don’t you think we might 


220 St. Quin 

drop that for a week? I’ve got to stick it for 
the rest of my life.” 

“But what shall I call you then?” said Fe- 
licity. 

“ Just Jimmy.” 

“You’ll be a failure in Society, I’m afraid,” 
she answered. 

“ I’ll bet they’ll rub the honesty off jolly soon. 
Well, it’s to be Jimmy, is it? ” 

“ If you like.” 

“ And I shall have to call you something.” 

“Aren’t you going a little too quickly?” she 
said. “ You rush your fences a bit, Jimmy.” 

“ A week’s such a short time.” 

“ Are we never to meet again then? ” she said, 
laughing at him. 

“ Under the awful eye of this world of Saun- 
ders. May I call you Felicity? It’s such a jolly 
name. I never had a sister.” 

“You want a nurse, I think; you’re a perfect 
baby.” 

“ We shall make awfully good friends, shan’t 
we, Felicity? By the way, you’ve nearly got your 
foot in the butter.” 

“ I want a cigarette, please,” she said, yielding 
to the joy of their meeting. 

“ I say,” he said, as he passed her his case, 
“ tell me all about it.” 

She flushed suddenly, her eyes meeting his. 
“ About what? ” she said. 


221 


Cross-questions 

“ You have a thin time, don’t you? ” 

“ I’m not unhappy,” she answered slowly. “ I’m 
merely bored. Oh, well, I will tell you about it. 
It will be a relief to tell somebody.” 

“ I think you need a brother.” 

And then her eyes suddenly filled with tears. 
“ Oh, I should think I do,” she said. 

“ If his head wants punching,” he said, with a 
set look on his face, “ I’m your man.” 

Felicity could not help laughing. This extraor- 
dinary young man seemed to think that life could 
be ruled by the simplest code. “ I’m afraid,” 
she said, “ that it is a bit more complicated than 
that. Besides, he’s fairly strong.” 

With a look of supreme satisfaction on his face 
he held up his right arm, crooked. “ Feel that,” 
he said, pointing to his biceps. 

“ Wonderful,” she said solemnly. 

“ That settles it,” he said firmly. 

“ Jimmy,” said Felicity, “ my husband is 
everything you would like. I mean, he is a splen- 
did man; he rowed for his Varsity.” 

He slapped his hand on his knee. “ By Jingo, 
that St. Quin! A rattling good chap. Never 
knew him, but I know all about him. I thought 
I remembered the name.” 

“ Is that his only claim to fame? ” 

“ It goes a long way,” said he. “ Well, I sup- 
pose you and he don’t hit it off.” 

“ My dear Jimmy,” she answered, “ if it was 


222 


St. Quin 


anything as simple as that it wouldn’t matter. 
We never quarrel, we are perfectly charming to 
each other; he does everything I want, but it is 
like a perfectly good waistcoat talking to a per- 
fectly good skirt. There isn’t a heart-beat be- 
tween us.” 

He smoked in silence for a little while. 

“ You have never been in love,” he said, blush- 
ing. “ It’s rather a difficult thing to say, but is 
there anyone else? ” 

“ Not a soul, I swear,” she answered. 

“ Rum case,” said the young man. u What are 
you going to do? ” 

“ Nothing.” 

“ Just rot away your life.” 

She shrank from the simple sentence, but she 
felt it was true. “ Yes,” she said slowly. u It is 
all I can do. Just rot away my life.” 

“ Pots of money, I suppose? ” 

“ Pots.” 

“And no kids?” 

She shook her head. 

He patted her arm gently. “ Jolly bad luck, 
old girl.” 

“ I think,” she said, “ that knowing you are 
about will help me. Of course, you will marry, 
and that will finish everything.” 

“ I wish I’d met you before,” he said. 

“ Chivalry is a charming form of crime some- 
times,” she answered. “ You’d never be in love 
with me.” 


Cross-questions 223 

“ Only in a jolly sort of way,” he answered. 
“ Better than he does, I’ll bet.” 

“ I’ve got one other friend,” said Felicity, “ but 
he has gone out of my life. So now it’s got to be 
you. Can you bear the burden? ” 

“ Try me,” he answered, standing up and 
throwing out his chest. “ I think you simply 
splendid. I say, you’ll have to discover me be- 
fore the crowd does. Ask me to dinner.” 

“ And find you some nice girl,” she said. 

“ Some day,” he sighed. “ I hate the idea of 
being married yet.” 

“ And one day,” she answered, “ you will dance 
all night with the same partner, propose to her 
on the stairs, and be carted to church in no time, 
and be gorgeously happy ever afterwards.” 

“ Kids,” he said, smiling. “ That’s all I think 
about, heaps of kids — little rippers.” 

“ And you the youngest of them all.” 

The sudden palpitating throb of a motor-car 
broke in on their talk. 

“ Saunders,” said Postcarrey. 

“ Life,” said Felicity. 

u Till to-morrow; same place. I’ll drive you 
home.” 

“ And cause more gossip in the village? Very 
well.” 


CHAPTER XX 

A CHILDLESS CHRISTMAS 

Mr. Nathaniel Bridgewater polished silver 
in his pantry, and hummed a music-hall song of 
many years ago. 

Elizabeth dusted the dining-room, and sang a 
little love ballad. 

Marie Louise peeled potatoes in her cozy 
kitchen, and thought of the manger they would 
be making in the Cathedral of Quimper, and of 
the market-place with its many booths full of toys 
and pottery, and of going to Mass in her best 
clothes. 

And Pamela sat in her room overlooking the 
garden with a smile of perfect content on her 
face. 

You see, there was a child in the house. 

No other bond could have linked these waifs 
and strays together so completely. The Georgian 
atmosphere was only a background to the human- 
ity of these four people. They had each made a 
present for Fifine with their own hands. Mr. 
Bridgewater had remembered a toy his mother 
had once made for him out of corks and hair- 


224 


A Childless Christmas 225 

pins, and he made a perfect family of unknown 
animals in the quiet of the pantry. They stood 
now in a ridiculous row on the top shelf of a 
cupboard. And they were a secret. 

In . the making of these monstrosities all the 
simple, happy spirit of childhood came back to 
him. He remembered the smell of the lodgings 
where his father and mother had presented him 
with a toy theatre. He remembered his enthu- 
siastic joy when the red curtain was rolled up, ex- 
posing to view a scene of a rocky cavern on to 
which the Demon King was thrust by means of 
a tin slide. His mother had been Sarah Bucket 
o*f the first row of the Ballet, and his father Roger 
Bridgewater, the youngest son of a paper manu- 
facturer, who was bitten with the stage. They 
had lived and died in a happy dream, though 
debts, and illness, and poverty had been their lot. 

The world is full of simple, good people who 
jest with life, and flirt with poverty, and live, sur- 
rounded by all the mean shifts and difficulties of 
struggling paupers, in a kind of golden haze of 
happiness. They are the world’s children, and if 
you scold them for being improvident they laugh. 

It could only be one of these who made cork 
pigs and cork porcupines in a butler’s pantry at 
the age of fifty odd. 

Pamela had made a white coat and cap of 
thick wool with love in every stitch. She did not 
allow her mind to dwell in the past and peer into 


226 


St. Quin 

the future. She thought only of the haven of rest 
into which she had sailed after storms and bat- 
tles, in which she had been all but conquered. 

Marie Louise had dressed a doll exactly like 
herself, and was so proud of it that she was a 
little sorry to part with it. 

Elizabeth, who was always embarrassing Ed- 
mond by cornering him on the stairs and over- 
whelming him with thanks, had made a royal 
outfit. 

Outside their tiny world all London gave her- 
self up to children. She put rows of turkeys and 
geese up in brilliantly lighted shops, and stuck 
lemons in the mouths of beautifully washed dead 
pigs, and made patterns in rosettes on huge pieces 
of beef. Her children breathed excitedly outside 
toy shops, and fingered pence till they were lost 
in the exquisite agony of choice among the goods 
within. 

Perfectly respectable persons went about laden 
with odd-shaped parcels; forgotten uncles kept 
surprising nephews and nieces with unexpected 
half-crowns; while as for stockings, and hampers, 
and holly and mistletoe, balls of coloured glass 
and artificial frost, the place swam with them. 

Turn down any street you like and you were 
certain to see cooks stirring Christmas puddings, 
and overloaded postmen delivering huge piles of 
parcels. They knocked quite differently, so any 
sensible child would tell you, because on ordinary 


A Childless Christmas 227 

days the knock was just “ tat, tat ” ; here are some 
dull bills and circulars. But now it was “ rat, 
atat-tat ” ; here are the most wonderful things, 
done up in brown paper and addressed personally 
to the nursery itself. 

Even ragged children had oranges and penny 
surprise-packets full of indigestible sweets. 

Here and there stark misery and hunger stared 
you in the face, and you shrank from the sight of 
London’s other grim side. Some poor, shivering 
wretch, shuffling along the streets holding his rags 
together, and blue with the biting wind. Give 
him a shilling, watch his misery-sodden face light 
up like the face of some half-wild beast. Follow 
him if you like, and see him slink off to the near- 
est public-house, where he can buy a few minutes’ 
warmth and forgetfulness. He is one of Lon- 
don’s children, and one of yours too. 

The Belvedere is a sadder place than Carthar 
Street, for in Carthar Street the Dancing Acad- 
emy is quite full, and the landladies are prepar- 
ing special meals, and children play in the gutter 
with scraps of coloured paper. But The Belve- 
dere thinks Christmas a bore, and goes out in 
warmed closed motor-cars and buys expensive 
things for people it does not much care for, that 
is, at least, that part of The Belvedere not at 
Monte Carlo, or somewhere in the Riviera or 
Cairo. 

Felicity has a list of names, with ticks against 


228 


St. Quin 


them to denote those for whom she has bought 
presents and those who remain to be provided for. 
The only sign of Christmas in the house is in the 
kitchen, where the cook has stuck up pieces of 
holly behind the top row of saucepans; and the 
butler, falling from the high estate of butlerdom, 
has placed a big bunch of mistletoe in a dark cor- 
ner. Even the second housemaid, the ugly one 
with the spectacles, has been kissed twice by the 
boy who does the boots. 

Lord Postcarrey had called, and had taken to 
Edmond at once, and, to Felicity’s astonishment, 
Edmond had welcomed him almost as a brother. 

He called one day in tremendous spirits. 
“ I say,” he said, “ I have broken Saunders’s 
spirit.” 

Edmond, who happened to be at home, having 
lunched out with Felicity, asked who Saunders 
might be. 

“ Saunders,” said Postcarrey, “ is a sort of 
cousin of Mrs. Grundy’s and the devil’s. He 
sees my tailor, and orders my meals, and looks 
on all I do with great disapproval. And now I 
have broken and smashed the beast. I .want to 
yell.” 

“ Yell, then,” said Felicity. 

“ He has given notice.” 

“ And how,” said Edmond, u have you achieved 
the marvel? ” 


A Childless Christmas 229 

“ I told him this morning that I was giving a 
children’s party.” 

“ At Postcarrey House ! ” said Edmond, laugh- 
ing. “ Why, the old gentleman will turn in his 
grave.” 

“ Let him turn,” said Postcarrey. “ It will be 
the first good turn he’s done me.” 

“ But do you know any children?” said Fe- 
licity. 

“ That’s the joke,” said Postcarrey, chuckling. 
“I said to Saunders, ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I 
suppose you can arrange a decent party,’ and he 
said, ‘ Certainly, my lord,’ with his stupid, smug 
face. So I said, ‘ I want to give a kids’ party on 
Christmas Day, and you must find the kids'.’ I 
honestly thought the chap would die. He said, 
‘ I am afraid that is impossible, my lord.’ So I 
asked him what use he was if he didn’t know any 
children, and told him he had to. So the silly ass 
gave notice on the spot, and now my one funk is 
that he will regret his haste and ask to be taken 
back. Never! You bet your boots.” 

“ Then the party is off,” said Felicity. 

“ St. Quin,” said Postcarrey, “ don’t you think 
it would do us all good to find a lot of little rip- 
pers, and stuff their tummies? ” 

“ Splendid,” said Edmond. 

“ Then,” said Postcarrey, “ Mrs. St. Quin shall 
find the children.” 

“Children!” said Felicity. “I hardly know 


230 St. Quin 

any children. There’s Molly Nelair — well, her 
children are away, so are the Baltons and the 
Trehomes. I can’t manage it.” 

“ Can’t we steal a few, or borrow some? ” he 
asked. 

“ I’m afraid not,” said Edmond. 

“Well, then, look at this, I think it’s a stroke 
of genius.” Postcarrey produced a piece of paper 
and read: 

“ A party will be given on Christmas Day 
at Postcarrey House. All children are in- 
vited. Heaps of food at four-thirty.” 

“ That’s for the Morning Post,” he added tri- 
umphantly. 

“ My dear Lord Postcarrey,” said Felicity, 
laughing, “ there would be millions of greedy, 
grubby brats packing the street. No, I don’t won- 
der Saunders left.” 

“ You won’t get one child,” said Edmond. 

Up jumped Postcarrey. “ Look here, St. Quin, 
I’ll bet you fifty pounds I have a children’s party 
on Christmas Day, and a jolly good one. On one 
condition : you lend me your wife for three days.” 

“ Me? ” said Felicity. , 

“ What on earth for? ” said Edmond. 

“ To help me wheedle nurses and parents. 
Think of the sport of it.” 

“ It’s impossible,” said Edmond. “ Besides 


A Childless Christmas 231 

“ Blow the conventions,” said Postcarrey. 
“ You are thinking that all the world will sniff and 
turn up noses and eyes, and think we are raving 
lunatics. Well, let’s be raving lunatics.” 

“ I think I should enjoy it,” said Felicity. 

“ It’s a bet,” said Edmond laughing. “ An 
even fifty.” 

“ We’ll play the Pied Piper,” said Postcarrey. 
“ And, by the way, everyone in British Columbia 
called me Jimmy, and I answer to it better than 
this long-winded affair. And, my Jingo, think of 
the larks we’ll have. I almost wish we were ask- 
ing Saunders. I should like to see Saunders with 
a kid on each knee, asking ridiculous questions. 
To-morrow — what? ” 

“ Besides,” said Felicity, “ otherwise we should 
have been so dull.” 

“ You must have kids at Christmas,” said Post- 
carrey. 

“ Am I to be invited? ” asked Edmond. 

“ Mrs. St. Quin, book your first child,” said 
Postcarrey. 

“ I thought children bored you, Edmond.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mind for once,” he answered. 
And this with the full knowledge that he was pre- 
paring a Christmas-Eve party especially for Fifine. 


CHAPTER XXI 

HAVOC AMONG THE INNOCENTS 

The idly dreaming nurses and unsuspecting 
parents of the city of London little knew of the 
Assyrian attack being prepared agains- their 
young. Quite serenely hundreds of mothers’ dar- 
lings trooped to their doom. They were wrapped 
up in furs and thick winter coats, and the frost 
made their faces red and jolly. Kensington Gar- 
dens, and the Park, Squares and Avenues took on 
the splendid and wholesome appearance those 
places take after breakfast. Perambulators 
blocked the way, split toys thrown by careless 
kings and queens littered the pavements, Master 
Charles howled, Miss Barbara beamed. Ques- 
tions of servants’ food, of walking out with sol- 
diers, of the tempers of masters and mistresses 
were freely discussed. 

The next generation marched proudly on its 
way served by hundreds of servants, smiled at by 
casual strangers, and admitted to the intimacy of 
policemen’s thoughts. 

What matter that fathers fretted their way 
officewards, and mothers pursed anxious lips over 
232 


Havoc among the Innocents 233 

accounts. What matter that young Lord Frilling- 
ton had to be led crying, by the hand, while Lady 
Augusta Barlbury Marston booed at him from 
her perambulator. Just so gutter babies took 
the air and sniffed the breeze with blood of the 
most azure. 

Old Father Christmas’s private life was ana- 
lysed, criticised, and fought over. How, for in- 
stance, could he come down the chimney which 
had been blocked up by the tube of a gas fire? 
How, if it was true that he drove a team of rein- 
deer through the sky, did he always appear in 
patent leather shoes? Young England affirmed 
and denied the idea. As for fairies, that was as 
it might be! As well not to deny them utterly 
but, as well also, to keep open mind. One got 
so badly taken in nowadays. 

So they marched, paraded, sauntered, and slept, 
all unaware of the hospitable strangers. Six 
young gentlemen, every one armed with a charm- 
ing manner, possessed of good clothes and a fine 
address met Lord Postcarrey and Mrs. St. Quin 
at a lunch party in Postcarrey House. They were : 
Bertie Haverstock and Charlie Newton Abbey of 
the Scots Guards; Denis O’Marleyburn of the 
Irish Guards; John P. Hasty, who built and 
owned Hastyville in Carolina; Newbury Malm- 
sey of five clubs and hundreds of debts ; and Pur- 
ling, the Duke of Weatherbury’s secretary. They 
entered the spirit of the party as do ducks swim. 


234 


St. Quin 


“ Are all men boys? ” asked Felicity. 

“ They are what charming ladies ask them to 
be,” said Denis O’Marleyburn. 

And then began the search. 

They drew lots for the better portions of the 
town. They addressed amazed nursemaids and 
demanded of their charges whether they cared for 
a Christmas party. They pledged Postcarrey to 
all sorts of presents. O’Marleyburn was the 
Terror of Hampstead. He marched up to strange 
houses accompanied by the children belonging to 
them, and explained to their astonished parents 
the idea of the party. Of course, an invitation 
to Postcarrey House was not to be thrown lightly 
aside. Kensington and Hampstead, Belgravia 
and Chelsea hummed with the name of Lord Post- 
carrey. The papers took it up; the correspond- 
ence grew enormous; firms sent presents, and ca- 
terers offered to do the food at cost price. 

In a week it became “ the thing ” for a child 
to be going to the Postcarrey party. People be- 
gan to enquire why they were not asked. People 
like the Duke of Nonsuch, for instance, and he 
was so charming that they asked him at once. 

As for the house itself. It was one of those 
houses dominating half one side of a square. 
It was so dignified and hallowed by memories of 
the meetings of statesmen and princes that it be- 
longed as much to London as to Postcarrey. In 
the hall atrocious Early Victorian statues posed 


Havoc among the Innocents 235 

against marble walls. Grinling Gibbons’s stair- 
case flourished its ornate way past antique gas- 
brackets. One expected the notice “ Silence Is Re- 
quested ” posted in every room. The rooms them- 
selves, with their wonderful pictures, the Post- 
carrey Van Dyck first of all, were of a forbid- 
ding size; they were redolent of Dundreary whis- 
kers and peg-top trousers and stock ties. Did 
these rooms overawe the children? Most cer- 
tainly not. You may as well know at once that 
seven tea-trays were utterly ruined on the Grin- 
ling Gibbons’s staircase. You may as well know 
also that the very footmen — the very footmen — 
unbent and rescued great beauties of eight and 
nine from perilous descents, climbs, and in many 
cases violent stomach troubles. Lemonade flowed 
like water. 

Does not the artillery of happily pulled crack- 
ers resound in every heart, and paper hats re- 
joice, and absurd toys delight? 

“ Madam,” said Denis O’Marleyburn solemnly 
to Felicity, “ I have fallen in love and proposed, 
and been accepted twenty-four times this after- 
noon. Give me your advice.” 

And she replied, overcome with the joy of the 
thing, “ You promised eternal devotion to me.” 

“ Then,” said he, quite gravely, “ let us fly to- 
gether to a cottage on the Orinoco, and fish for- 
ever for mermaids.” 

To which she answered, “ You forget that you 


St. Quin 


236 

have your last love sitting on your shoulder.” 
And turning to the infant perched there she 
asked, “ Do you love this funny gentleman? ” 

“ He is my husband for to-day,” replied Lady 
Caroline Wilks, for it was indeed that celebrated 
beauty of seven. “ And we are going to have 
nineteen children.” 

Postcarrey himself was on the floor dressed in 
a hearthrug, giving imitations of a bear. The 
matter had commenced in this way. “ Will I be 
a bear? Of course I’ll be a bear. Putting” — 
this to a solemn footman in attendance — “ kindly 
fetch a hearthrug at once.” 

“ It comes better this way to make the ’ead, 
my lord,” said. Putting. 

“ I thank you,” said Postcarrey, on all fours. 
“ Tell Fordrey that we shall be ready for the tree 
in a quarter of an hour.” 

A Christmas Tree! Nonsense. No such ordi- 
nary idea. A forest of trees hanging down with 
presents. Edmond had no idea that he was be- 
ing watched, but Felicity was observing him out 
of the corners of her eyes. Childish romps 
brought them together, and they laughed into 
each other’s eyes frankly. 

He had given himself up heart and soul to the 
children, his hair was rumpled, he laughed aloud; 
his coat was clutched, and hands hot with excite- 
ment were clasped tightly by his own. 

It was a sight to cleanse the world. A garden 


Havoc among the Innocents 237 

of children filled the big staircase; young men and 
women gave out presents with grave courtesy; 
little shrill screams of delight echoed into the 
carved ceiling. And then, when the trees were 
wheeled away, a gentleman appeared alone in the 
hall, and a table was set for him together with 
a few odd-looking things, including a pistol and 
a bird-cage with a live bird in it hopping about 
for everybody to see. Lord Postcarrey’s own 
finest silk hat was borrowed, and arrived glisten- 
ing and immaculate. Out of it rabbits and guinea 
pigs and roses were produced, and as each thing 
was taken out a. thrill ran through the audience. 
But when from the tiny pockets of Miss Emily 
Brand there appeared the flags of all nations, the 
audience could not contain themselves, and tre- 
mendous applause drowned the momentary tears 
of Miss Brand, who did not quite appreciate the 
sudden change in her best frock. 

The bird was shot and came to life again; 
pigeons appeared out of tablecloths; Mr. Hasty’s 
gold watch was pounded to pieces and turned up 
going beautifully in an omelette. 

Magic, mystery, the romance of the unexpected 
filled the old house. It fills the world. It is to 
be met with at street-corners, in big houses and 
little houses, in gardens and back yards. It is that 
part of life that makes life worth living. Just 
perhaps a rose in a tumbler peering out of a 
dusty window; perhaps the sight of a child at 


St. Quin 


238 

play; the magic of a bird’s sudden song, the 
mystery of a summer night, the romance of an 
’Arry and his Donah, Romeo and Juliet of the 
slums. 

That night London gave herself up to children 
and the child-spirit. That night old memories 
floated out and sweetened sour people. That 
night lonely men dined solitary in restaurants, 
or took long walks, empty. That night in houses 
whose nurseries were closed, where toys were put 
away, mothers mourned dead children and shook 
to hear a childish voice, or wept to think of little 
clinging arms. 

Down in The House in Chiswick, Pamela dined 
alone. The world seemed dead to her and far 
away. She looked into the fire and saw faces 
and houses there, and thought of that wasted life 
of hers and the agony of certain days and nights, 
but they seemed faded, and their wounds seemed 
healed. 

Fifine was tucked in bed and fast asleep. Marie' 
Louise and Elizabeth and Mr. Bridgewater 
played Pope Joan and drank spiced wine. From 
attic to kitchen the old House was very still, and 
her ghosts came out and wandered freely. The 
builder came and touched her solid walls, a little 
man in skirted coat with twinkling cut-steel but- 
tons, his wig, a triple Bob, awry. An elderly 
gentleman all in dark green, with soft lace and a 
diamond brooch, walked goutily from room to 


Havoc among the Innocents 239 

room. Two men, one young and flushed with 
wine, the other cold and dark, refought a duel 
in the hall. A lady, very old, found a deep 
elbow-chair, and told a girl in a flowered sacque 
how she had seen Charles the First die in White- 
hall. 

And then, it was only half-past ten, the front 
door was opened and Edmond came in. His 
dress-clothes looked so strange against Pamela’s 
cream coloured satin gown, and hair dressed like 
a picture by Romney. Back flew the ghosts of 
other years ; to-day held the moment. 

“ I have only five minutes,” he explained. “ But 
a happy Christmas to you. It has been such a 
day, children in streams. If you could have seen 
them tucked away into cars and carriages and 
cabs, some half asleep, and others crying with 
excitement, and all clasping toys ! One moment, 
I must go into the kitchen.” 

He opened the kitchen door and looked in at 
what might have been a picture by Teniers. The 
old Pope Joan board in the middle of a gate- 
legged table; the china bowl of steaming wine; 
Nathaniel Bridgewater arrested with an unlifted 
card; Marie Louise with her big, white, starched 
collar, and Elizabeth in blue. 

“ A happy Christmas ! ” 

Glasses were touched hob and nob. 

Did the other world outside, the world where 
wretched beggars shivered in the cold, seem real? 


240 


St. Quin 


Did Mr. Bridgewater, as he gave “ God bless us 
all ” in most dramatic fashion, think of the time 
when landladies claimed at least a portion of 
rent long overdue? Did Elizabeth think of her 
awful moment: deserted, stranded, starving? Or 
did these children, clinging to the Romance of 
their surrounding, blot out the past, and let the 
present reign? 

Are there not hearts that beat at sight of 
swords,' and minds still set on sailing foreign 
seas? Does a lonely light high up in some huge 
block of flats seem like the beacon-light to some 
adventure? 

The glasses were raised high and drained. 

“ Good night,” said Edmond. 

Then he went again to Pamela. “ Are you sad 
sitting here all alone? ” he asked. 

She turned her pale face to his and smiled. 
“ This place,” she answered, “ tells me a hundred 
stories, and makes me forget my own. But I 
was thinking, and it frightened me, of the thin 
wall there is between me and all that surges out- 
side. One day, I suppose, I shall open the gate 
and go out.” 

“ We are only prisoners to our own desires,” 
he answered. 

“ I think what one wishes for most is the sense 
of security. I often wish I had some real re- 
ligion ; religious people like monks and nuns seem 
so securely happy. They are happy, one sup- 


Havoc among the Innocents 241 

poses, because they are all lovers. I dread the 
day when I must go into the world and face the 
fight again.” 

He put a hand on her shoulder. “ That need 
never be. This is your house, remember that. I 
have made it for you, and give it to you. I think 
furnishing it has been a kind of religion to me. 
Think .that to-night, in a few moments, I must 
go out and face people who will all be wearing 
masks of politeness. I am leaving you and this 
perfect picture to go into a big, crowded room of 
people whom I do not care to meet. They crowd 
together because they are so frightened of being 
alone. Being alone makes them think, and they 
hate to think. It is Christmas night, a night of 
goodwill and charity. Will they be charitable? 
I tell you,” he said vehemently, “ that if one 
woman stole a ring they would all rise up and 
crush her to a certain Society death. And yet 
half of them cheat at cards. I live among them 
because my wife is one of them. True, that she 
is far better than most of them and would disdain 
to cheat, but her head has no room for anything 
real; she has no time to give to anything but 
amusement. And yet ” 

“ And yet?” 

“ To-day she surprised me. She was among 
a number of children, and seemed to love it and 
to be as young as any of them. To-day has sur- 
prised me altogether. A number of perfectly 


242 St. Quin 

fashionable people romped like real babies, and 
enjoyed a conjuror up to the hilt, when I know 
most of them are regularly bored at every enter- 
tainment they go to.” 

“ Tell me,” she said gently, “ are you in some 
big, or responsible, position? I know so little 
of your life outside here.” 

Edmond smiled grimly. “ I shall own a very 
large estate, and villages and churches and the 
like. I have heaps of money, two houses, and 
goodness knows what etceteras, and I would give 
them all for this box of toys.” 

“ How you must have changed! ” 

“ I do not think,” he said, “ that any of us 
change, only that some of us grow up.” 

“ I envy the people who are always children,” 
said Pamela. 

“ I know one,” he' said, laughing. “ A great, 
huge boy, Lord Postcarrey. He could bowl a 
hoop, or spin a top with just the same joy with 
which he can shoot a grouse. He gave the chil- 
dren’s party, really, because he is such a child 
that their company appeals to him most.” 

“ Do you think,” she asked, “ that we take 
ourselves a little too seriously?” 

“ A sense of humour is a gift of the gods,” he 
answered, “ and*that is why so few people under- 
stand it.” 

He left the house, and walking to the main 
road hailed a passing cab. He was, in reality, 


Havoc among the Innocents 243 

as big a child as Postcarrey, only he was one of 
those children who play absurd games in deadly 
earnest. If they build castles in the sand they do 
so with grave faces, absolutely absorbed. The 
House was a great big toy; the dressing up was 
a great big game, but so far he had not been able 
to see the humour of it, the pathetic, laughable, 
splendid humour that might have sent him 
straight into his wife’s arms. 


CHAPTER XXII 

THE TELL-TALE WINDOW 

Mr. Bridgewater was going that seemingly 
prosaic errand of ordering the beer. Not that 
the fetching and carrying of ale has not its poetic 
side, that side dealing with ancient song, ballad, 
and legend. But Mr. Bridgewater was no Hebe, 
and it must be confessed that he felt it a task 
rather below a man of his standing. 

Beer, of course, is an entrancing subject. It 
suggests old inns and odd names, such as “ The 
Pig and Whistle ” or “ The Dancing Drome- 
dary.” t It suggests fine pewter tankards and 
homely bar-parlours, with red curtains shutting 
out over-curious eyes, and a warm corner by the 
fire, together with a clay pipe, lit by a red-hot 
coal. There is, indeed, no end to its suggestions, 
for it ranges in interest from sturdy Saxon serfs 
drinking mead, and German barons quaffing great 
horns of it in castle halls. There are Audit 
Ales, and All-Souls’ Ales, Sparkling October, and 
September Brews. Verily, a true English poet, 
seeing Mr. Bridgewater carrying a foaming jug, 
might have straightway burst into song to the in- 
244 


The Tell-tale Window 


245 

terest of all beholders; a song of Bellarmines, 
those fat brown Elizabethan jugs, and of lordly 
pottle-pots, of noggins of ale, of tankards with 
lids, and splendid gallon jars lying on the shady 
side of the hedge while reapers moved among the 
corn. 

He might sing, on the sight of Mr. Bridge- 
water coming out of the “ Barley Mow,” of how 
King Henry VIII took small ale before and to 
his breakfast; of how Elizabeth’s maids-of-honour 
drew a beer allowance of some good pints a day 
from the Royal Buttery; of sturdy casks of beer 
in cold, country cellars; of the joy of good hop 
gardens; of Silas Todd, the reformed sailor, who 
preached to criminals on their last drive to Ty- 
burn; and of the stopping of the grim equipage 
at the Bowl House by St. Giles’ Pound, where 
your poor highwayman, or pirate, drank his last 
bowl of Yorkshire stingo. 

Had Mr. Bridgewater been carrying milk, the 
case might have been quite different. There is 
precious little to be sung of milk, unless you are 
put to it. Had it been bread, the song had not 
been near so jolly. Bread is a solemn subject, 
more fit for chants and epic discussion. 

Sausage,' and it would have been humorous. 
Eggs, a comic song. A bottle of rare old Bur- 
gundy or Port, and some great lyrical Romance 
had been written. But beer is homely, and means 
coaches, and ostlers whistling, and pretty cham- 


246 St. Quin 

ber-maids, and all the fuss and splendid confusion 
of a tavern. 

Mr. Bridgewater, in a blue suit, came out of 
the “ Barley Mow ” and banged into a gentle- 
man on the pavement. It was the beer for his 
luncheon, and drawn finely, with a good stiff head 
on it — the cask at The House having run dry. 
The beer splashed a good quarter pint on the 
pavement, and splattered the young gentleman’s 
clothes. Mr. Bridgewater’s apologies were or- 
nate and profuse. 

The young gentleman said it was of no conse- 
quence. 

Mr. Bridgewater looked ruefully at the beer. 

The young gentleman remarked it was a liba- 
tion to the gods. 

Now those people who do not believe that 
the gods are about are those who are themselves 
the sport of the gods. It was spring, and Mer- 
cury was strolling about Chiswick, and for mis- 
chief it was he who had jogged Mr. Bridge- 
water’s elbow, splashed the beer over the brown 
boots of Lord Postcarrey, and then, having set 
the ball rolling, passed on to further adventure. 

There are people actually alive, and to be met 
with, who regard the spring as a political sea- 
son, and allege that stocks and shares are of 
more importance than a penny bunch of violets. 
They are not blind, they admit, to the follies of 
Human Nature, but they serve merely as a bone 


The Tell-tale Window 


247 

for contention and criticism. It is of these people 
that it is written “ They are wise in their own 
generation.” 

The gods are abroad. Jupiter was dictating 
a letter to the Times. Venus smiled from be- 
hind the counter of a lingerie establishment. 
Mercury, we know, was in Chiswick, and Diana 
was looking at the deer in Richmond Park. Only 
those whom the gods love could see them; others, 
blinded by their own importance, were talking of 
the ruling of nations, and of how, if they were 
So-and-So, they could manage so much better. 

The young gentleman suddenly remarked that 
he had walked some considerable distance, and 
the idea of a glass of beer came like a wonder- 
ful inspiration; would Mr. Bridgewater join him? 

Mr. Bridgewater found himself consumed with 
thirst. 

The bar-parlour of the “ Barley Mow ” is as 
snug as you please. Windsor chairs, a bench 
with red Turkey twill cushions, a stuffed pike in 
a glass-case, and a little long window pleasantly 
filled with geraniums in red pots. 

“ Your very good health,” said our butler, rais- 
ing his tankard. “ My name, sir, is Bridge- 
water.” 

“ And mine,” said the young man quickly, “ is 
Postcarrey. I drink to Mr. Bridgewater.” 

Their noses vanished in uplifted draughts of 
fine nut-brown ale. 


248 


St. Quin 


“ Does a man good to stretch his legs,” 
said Postcarrey, putting his tankard down on a 
table ringed with the wet impressions of other 
feasts. 

“You do not look like an indoor man, sir,” 
said Mr. Bridgewater. 

“Your observation does you credit. I loathe 
stuffiness, and I detest London. I have just come 
from abroad.” 

“ Indeed,” said Mr. Bridgewater. “ They tell 
me Paris is a line city, sir.” 

“ That is as it may be,” said Postcarrey, “ but 
I have never seen it. I am from British Co- 
lumbia.” 

“ Ah, now that would be an interesting spot,” 
said Mr. Bridgewater, cudgelling his brains for 
some appropriate remark. “ I dare say the scen- 
ery is very wild.” 

“ I should jolly well think it was,” said Post- 
carrey. “ For twopence I’d go back there to- 
morrow.” 

“Perhaps a little subscription?” said Mr. 
Bridgewater, smiling knowingly as he laid down 
a shilling. Postcarrey laughed. “ It’s a tempt- 
ing offer,” he said. 

So Mr. Bridgewater summoned the beautiful 
barmaid and ordered her to supply two more 
tankards of beer. “ It is a pleasure to meet 
you, Mr. Postcarrey,” he said. “ I do not see 
many people.” 


The Tell-tale Window 


2.49 

“ You had better have lunch with me,” said 
Postcarrey, for he liked the old man. 

Mr. Bridgewater smiled, and held up his hand. 
“ I am a person, sir, in a domestic capacity,” he 
answered. “ Humble, but, I trust, useful.” 

“ Then come and buttle for me,” said Post- 
carrey. “ I’ve just got rid of an awful beast. 
Is it a bargain? ” 

“ It is a pleasure I must deny myself. I am 
pledged for life.” 

“ A long engagement.” 

“ There,” said Mr. Bridgewater, coming al- 
most breathless out of his tankard, “ lies the 
whole point of the argument.” 

“ Indeed.” 

“ I am an actor,” said Mr. Bridgewater, quite 
unconsciously dropping into a* dramatic pose. 
“ And fortune, sir, placed me, as it is called, upon 
the rocks.” 

“ Stony broke.” 

“ Exactly. Then, sir, a most curious adven- 
ture befell me. I fell in with a gentleman who 
is, I venture to think, touched in the upper story.” 

“ Slipped his trolley,” said Postcarrey. 

“ Exactly, sir. A charming young man — 
charming, but odd. Kind is not the word, and 

gentle as a lamb. But ” With a wave of his 

hand he conveyed unutterable things. 

“ Queer,” said Postcarrey. 

44 Not the word, sir — eccentric. We live,” he 


250 


St. Quin 


whispered, “ as if in an Old English Comedy. 
Our house, I should say, is one of the most re- 
markable in London. In fact, the whole thing is 
perfectly staged.” 

“ A woman? ” 

“ Three, sir, and a child.” 

Postcarrey whistled. 

“ Not at all,” said Mr. Bridgewater earnestly. 
u No suggestion. We are all, if I may say so, 
the sport of circumstances.” 

“ I know I am,” said Postcarrey. 

“ From the main stream of success we are, 
some of us, thrown aside and stranded. This 
gentleman — perhaps you know the name, sir — 
Falconer? ” 

“ New to me.” 

“ Mr. Falconer has put out a helping hand. 
We have a cook, who was lost in Victoria Sta- 
tion, and a young person with a child.” 

“ I quite understand,” said Postcarrey, for Mr. 
Bridgewater had uplifted one eyebrow. 

“ And,” he continued, “ a lady he saved from 
a watery grave. We all dress in Georgian 
garments, we have a beautiful garden, and all 
the food and drink the heart of man could 
desire.” 

“ It’s a rum, funny world.” 

“ Its fun, Mr. Postcarrey, runs alongside its 
pathos. Real laughter lives with honest tears. 
But for the beer running out ” 


The Tell-tale Window 


251 

“ Which gives me the pleasure of your com- 
pany.” 

“ Reciprocated — I should even now be in knee- 
breeches and wig waiting for one of the superb 
omelettes made by Marie Louise. In fact, I must 
hurry back at once.” 

“ I should like to see the house,” said Post- 
carrey, rising. 

“ I can show you the outside of it. I can show 
you our high garden walls and the tops of our 
trees from a side lane. And you can catch a 
glimpse of the big staircase window.” 

As they were walking, Postcarrey asked if this 
Mr. Falconer lived always in the house. 

“ Indeed no,” said Mr. Bridgewater. “ He is 
a bird, if I may say so, of passage. He seldom 
dines with us, and very rarely sleeps. He has, 
we think, another establishment, perhaps of a 
similar order. Again, we have ventured to guess 
that he is unhappily married.” 

“ Poor devil.” 

“We are devoted to him. But, sir, there is 
but one thought that mars my peace. What if 
he gave up everything, as eccentric gentlemen are 
apt to do? I should be again upon the rocks.” 

Postcarrey drew out his cigar-case and gave 
Mr. Bridgewater his card. 

“ A thousand pardons, my lord,” said Mr. 
Bridgewater, looking at the inscription. “ I had 
no idea.” 


2$2 


St. Quin 


“ Look here,” said Postcarrey, as they turned 
into the lane, “ no nonsense. If you find yourself 
stranded come straight to me. I shall be jolly 
sick, if you don’t.” 

“ But- ” he began. 

“ I’ve knocked about all my life, and I know 
a man when I s§e one. I like honest human be- 
ings, and I know what it is to be hard up.” 

“Quickly!” said Mr. Bridgewater, taking 
hold of Postcarrey’s arm, “ look up at that win- 
dow. There is Mr. Falconer himself.” 

“ Is that Mr. Falconer? ” 

“ There, looking out over the garden. He’s 
gone now. Excuse me, my lord, I must hurry.” 

“ Look here,” said Postcarrey, still gazing at 
the window. “ Come to me next Thursday eve- 
ning. We’ll have a long talk. If you can’t come 
then, come on Friday. I have some things that 
will interest you.” 

“ If I can, I shall be delighted. Good day, 
and many thanks to you.” 

He raised his hand, and vanished through the 
garden door. 

Postcarrey still stood in the, lane. “ I must 
get to the bottom of this,” he thought, “ because 
I’ll bet any money that the chap at the window 
was Teddy St. Quin.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


FORM AT A GLANCE 

Now London breeds every class of street out of 
her bricks and mortar. For wholesale poverty 
she has tenement dwellings, intended, it appears, 
to emphasise the joy of prisons; there you may 
keep canaries on the outside fire-escape. For the 
world above that she has broken down once- 
fashionable streets and squares, where the sign 
“ Mangling done ” hangs in a Georgian fanlight. 
Again, she provides tissue-paper residences, al- 
leged to be of red brick, where clerks open doors 
labelled “ Myrtle Towers,” and where the effect 
of the piano — hoarse with long teaching — in num- 
ber one jars on the nerves of the cat on the 
hearth-rug of number twenty. A step up takes 
one to desolate houses called “ desirable proper- 
ties,” all very flat fronted and proper, a row of 
maiden-aunt-with-a-little-money houses, where the 
dining-room windows are permanently sealed by 
glass ferneries, and sham stained glass in the 
front doors gives the halls an ecclesiastical gloom. 

On the fringe of rich neighbourhoods there are 
little streets containing every variety of house 

253 


254 St. Quin 

built to the taste of the original owner; some of 
them, Late Victorian, are stucco Gothic, others, 
Late Edwardian, are madly picturesque, and are 
given over to white rubble and oak beams at least 
an eighth of an inch thick. Most of these have 
gardens at the back in which cats give evening 
concerts among the beds of potted plants. But, 
dotted here and there, are little pocket delights, 
the envy of all beholders, monuments of ancient 
taste, and the utter embarrassment of our vulgar 
look-rich generation. 

Hyacinth Venn, now on the road to success, 
lived in the Red House, Kensington. In his 
study, a pleasant room lined with books, Lord 
Postcarrey sat smoking with a whisky and soda 
at his elbow. Venn sat in a writing-chair, and 
Barbara upright on the hearth-rug. 

“ Well,” said Postcarrey, as he finished his 
story, “ is the chap mad, or is he — forgive me, 
Mrs. Venn — not playing the game? ” 

“ Thank God, he’s human,” said Venn. 

“ And right,” said Barbara. 

Both men stared at her. “ He must have been 
driven to it,” she went on. “ I am sure I under- 
stand. Felicity bores him.” 

“ Then he is an ass,” said Postcarrey. 

“ He is my brother,” said Barbara. 

“ She is a ripper.” 

“ We don’t get any further in that way,” said 
Venn. “ What to do? That’s the question.” 


Form at a Glance 


255 

“ It doesn’t harm anybody,” said Barbara. 
“Leave him alone.” 

“ Oh, I say, look here,” said Postcarrey. 
“ There’s the woman, you see.” 

“ You can explain away a man having a theat- 
rical mania,” said Venn, “ but we understand 
that he, to say the least of it, only saves very 
attractive women.” 

“ What about your friend, Lord Postcarrey? ” 

“ Well, he did help old Bridgewater,” he an- 
swered. 

“ He loathed Society and shams and humbug, 
and he chose this way of escape,” said Barbara. 
“ Poor old Teddy.” 

“ There’s the woman,” said Venn. “ And 
scandal is not quite the joy either of Felicity’s 
family or yours.” 

“ Then we can keep it to ourselves,” said Bar- 
bara. 

“ I’m awfully sorry to lump in like this,” said 
Postcarrey. “ But I found out entirely by acci- 
dent, and I’m very fond of Felicity.” 

“ So everybody says,” said Barbara pointedly. 

“ I don’t care a — a jot for anybody’s opinion,” 
he answered. “ I am awfully fond of her, and I 
don’t care who knows it. All I say is that the 
chap ought not to put her in this position.” 

“ If we are arguing from the point of view 
of good form,” said Venn, “ I think he ought to 
explain himself.” 


256 


St. Quin 


“ And they say women are the busy-bodies,” 
said Barbara. “ Let Teddy alone, and let Felic- 
ity alone. They are perfectly happy.” 

“ Forgive me,” said Postcarrey; “ but although 
Pm an ass, I can see straight. They could be 
happy, and they ought to be, but they are not. 
I’m going to see this through, only I thought you 
ought to know.” 

“ You are going to tell Teddy? ” said Barbara. 

“ I’m going to tell her.” 

Barbara tapped her foot impatiently. “ This 
isn’t British Columbia,” she said. 

“ What is square is square,” he answered. 
“ Here are two jolly fine people rotting away 
their lives. Your brother is a crank, and she 
hasn’t ever known him properly. He is only a 
crank because he doesn’t know her. I bet my bot- 
tom dollar a little fresh air in this affair will 
square the whole caboodle. She’ll get bitter and 
he’ll get narrow.” 

“ I think he’s right, dear,” said Venn. “ Even 
if it could go on and no one ever know, as 
Postcarrey says, Teddy and Felicity would 
deteriorate. But, you know, it’s a queer busi- 
ness.” 

“ So far,” said Barbara, “ everything, as far 
as we know, is eccentric but harmless.” 

“ If you think it is harmless to marry and give 
the best part of your life to another woman,” 
said Venn. 


Form at a Glance 


257 

“ Of course,” said Postcarrey, “ I’m in an 
awful funk.” 

“ Lord Postcarrey,” said Barbara, “ are you 
in love with Felicity? ” 

He blushed to the roots of his hair. Venn 
frowned. 

“ To tell you the truth,” he said, “ I am not. 
These things are difficult to explain, but when I 
was jolly lonely and fed up with things, I met 
her. I thought she looked so jolly and happy 
and all that, and then I found she was just as 
fed up as I was. So I cottoned on to her, and 
felt bucked that such a jolly woman trusted in 
me. And there you are.” 

“ Isn’t it a little dangerous,” said Barbara, 
“ for a young man to throw his rather-well- 
known body at the feet of a charming woman and 
ask sisterly affection from her in return for show- 
ing up her husband? ” 

“ Babs,” said Venn, “ that’s hard, too hard.” 

“ We are all supposed to be acting very much 
in the open, so I stated the case,” she said. 

“ You are fighting for your brother, not against 
me,” Postcarrey said. 

“ What I think,” she answered, “ is that you 
are trying to gain happiness for Felicity at the 
cost of my brother’s peace of mind. You think 
you can drive two people into each other’s arms 
by making them fight first; a real man’s idea. 
But a woman like Felicity is just as likely to be 


St. Quia 


258 

driven into your arms, and then if, as you say, 
you only love her as a sister, what becomes of 
you, Lord Postcarrey? ” 

“Dash it!” cried that muddled nobleman, 
“ nobody but a woman could tangle a simple thing 
so terrificly. All Pm going to do is to say to 
her: * Here you are, simply fed up. Here’s your 
husband, a jolly good chap, forced into a kind 
of silly ass joke to keep any interest in life. I’ll 
tell you the joke, and you bust the thing up, and 
you’ll all be as jolly as sandboys.’ ” 

Barbara laughed, and Venn’s face was all a 
broad grin. 

“ You propose,” she said, “ to show one 
woman her successful rival, and then expect her 
to go back to her husband and congratulate him 
on his choice. Now, really, if I knew you better 
I should ” 

“ Like to spank me,” cried Postcarrey, roaring 
with laughter. 

“ I should. Oh, what a nursery this world is 
for us poor women! You will do nothing.” 

His face was grave again. “ Oh, no. I’m 
going straight on, because I’m sure it’s the decent 
thing to do. I’ll stand the consequences.” 

“ But, my dear man, you won’t have any con- 
sequences to stand.” 

“ I can stick up for her.” 

Barbara stood up and held the lapel of Post- 
carrey’s coat. u Broad shoulders won’t bear the 


Form at a Glance 


259 

trouble of aching hearts. You are trying to 
make a cock-shy of a heap of tangled emotions, 
and it won’t do. Leave them alone, do.” 

“ Look here,” he said just as earnestly. “ If 
you had a great man pal and you found out his 
wife was gadding about like blazes with some 
other chap, and you felt that the greatest happi- 
ness would be if the wife and husband could 
come together and start again, wouldn’t you have 
a shot? ” 

“ The risk,” she said, “ is too great. Suppose 
you find out that Teddy is in love with this other 
woman, what then?” 

Venn had been sitting silent all this time; the 
entanglement appealed to him from the literary 
point of view. Edmond and his house and the 
odd tale struck him as something bizarre and 
fascinating in the middle of so much prosaic life. 
Yet things infinitely more curious than this ap- 
peared in the newspapers every week: queer 
crimes, cases of mistaken identity were ordinary 
facts of daily life, and fantastic things went on 
next to Underground Stations and by Post Offices, 
and plots wilder than novelists’ dreams were 
hatched in little common eating-houses. The 
stone flags of Piccadilly rang with the feet of mur- 
derers and misers, burglars, long-firm swindlers, 
sharpers, forgers, Dukes and Kings and Queens. 
Here a great inventor stepped, starving, as he 
waited for the turn of Fortune’s wheel; here 


260 


St. Quin 


some bearded foreigner whispered conspiracies 
and dreams of conquest to some sleek financier. 
Here, in a mile of walk, a few feet of plate-glass 
protected hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth 
of jewels and gold from millions of passers by; 

' some, starving, saw but half an inch of glass be- 
tween their hands and untold wealth, others by 
the mere signing of a piece of paper became pos- 
sessed of the ring of a Roman Emperor or the 
jade necklace of a Mandarin. This little walk, if 
it could give up its secrets, would tell, thought 
Venn, stories as peculiar as St. Quin’s zest for 
an Eighteenth Century Romance. 

Postcarrey looked at Barbara, and shook his 
head. “ I’m not a clever chap,” he said, “ but I 
manage to muddle through. * I’m dead set on do- 
ing this, and I know it’s the right thing to do.” 

“ Oh, very well,” she said, releasing her hold 
of his coat. “ Go and do it. But never, never 
expect me to speak to you again.” 

His face grew set and stern. He bade them 
good afternoon stiffly, and left the house. 

“ Babs,” said Venn, holding up a finger at her, 
“you’ve been a bit unkind, haven’t you? ” 

“ Unkind! ” she said. “ Why, I think he’s a 
perfect darling.” 

“ ‘ I shall never, never speak to you again,’ ” 
he quoted. 

“ Now, don’t be silly,” she answered. “ That’s 
nothing. I only said that to make sure of his 


Form at a Glance 261 

coming here as soon as he’s got it over. I’m 
dying of curiosity, aren’t you?” 

“ Of course.” 

“ And if Felicity isn’t in love with him, she 
ought to be.” 

“With Teddy?” 

“ Nonsense. With Lord High Baby of Post- 
carrey. Are you jealous? ” 

For answer he took her in his arms and kissed 
her. “ My dear,” he said, with his grave smile, 
“ I never expected to understand a woman, and 
I never shall. Thank Heaven, I’m foolish enough 
to love one.” 

“ Hyacinth,” she answered, “ you’ve got a 
white hair.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE ARMOUR OF BREEDING 

Felicity listened with a beating heart. She felt 
that a few hours would show her her path in life 
for ever. Her hands were clenched tightly and 
her face was white. Postcarrey saw this and 
said, “ Shall I ring the bell?” 

“ Oh, no, thanks,” she answered. “ I’m not 
going to faint, or do anything stupid.” 

“ Are you sorry I told you? ” 

“ Sorry ! I’m glad, glad! ” 

She went to a glass and looked at herself crit- 
ically. He saw her give a little approving mo- 
tion of her head. 

“ Jimmy,” she said, “ bore yourself with a 
book for twenty minutes, will you? After that 
you must take me to Chiswick.” 

“ You are going at once? ” 

“ Could you bear to wait? ” she asked him. 
“Won’t you see him first?” he suggested. 

“ Him? ” she said, smiling. “ I don’t want to 
see him, I want to see the woman. And when 
I’ve seen her I shall know at once.” 

“ And you want me to come? ” 

262 


The Armour of Breeding 263 

“ If my husband is there you are to take him 
away. You’ll find heaps of books about. Will 
you have tea, or a whisky and soda? ” 

He smiled grimly. “ A two-finger peg for me. 
I say, you’ll have something.” 

She rang the bell, and when the man came she 
ordered the whisky and soda. “ And tell my 
maid to come here.” 

“ Julie,” she said, when the maid appeared. 
“ That new dress that came this morning; I shall 
change at once.” 

Postcarrey went to the window and looked 
down on the gardens of The Belvedere. The 
May trees were out, a spring sky full of light 
and shade made dappled shadows on the grass. 
The Duke of Nonsuch came out of his house and 
crossed to the sunny side of the street. The whole 
scene wore an aspect of sleek serenity. The sight 
of the old man moving slowly in the sun, and 
stopping to stroke a fine Persian cat by the gar- 
den railings, made it appear that content and 
peace reigned. 

Postcarrey began to whistle, “ What ho ! She 
Bumps ” with many little extra trills. 

He waited, quite content, for over half an hour, 
and became so engaged in finding fresh varia- 
tions for his air that he did not hear Felicity 
enter the room. 

“ Have I been long?” she said, and the sound 
of her voice startled him. 


St. Quin 


264 

“ My sainted Sam ! ” he cried. “ What have 
you been doing to yourself? ” 

“Nice?” she asked. 

“Absolutely top-hole. You look stunning.” 

“ I want to,” she said, pulling on her gloves. 

“ But, I say,” he said, “ I’m in this rotten old 
tweed suit.” 

“ My dear Jimmy,” she answered, “ you 
aren’t going to meet a woman. I shall walk as 
far as the Park, and then we’ll take a taxi.” 

“ Well, all I can say is,” said he, “you look 
jolly, really jolly.” 

“ I feel it,” she answered grimly. 

Past every kind of vehicle they went, from a 
Royal carriage at Hyde Park Corner, to the arm- 
worked tricycle of a legless man in Hammer- 
smith. The long, unbroken line of houses began 
in a big hospital and ended in lodging-houses for 
costermongers. Shops started at one end by sell- 
ing extravagant silks and gold-mounted dressing- 
cases, and ended by exposing in their windows 
cheap ready-tied ties and two-penny plates of hot 
sausages. 

Felicity chattered the whole way. The fine 
feathers in her hat danced in the wind. Smiles 
danced in her eyes. She knew she was perfect 
from top to toe, as perfect as shops and breed- 
ing, as body and raiment could make her. She 
went to the fight of her life with all her colours 
flying. 


The Armour of Breeding 265 

Never before had she known how much she 
loved her husband, and now she was determined 
to win him for herself against the world of 
women. 

“ You look as if you didn’t mind,” said Post- 
carrey. “ I’m in a beastly funk.” 

“ That’s because you have nothing to do,” she 
answered. “ Now if I had asked you to horse- 
whip my husband, you’d be bowling along all 
smiles.” 

“ You’re a jolly clever woman.” 

“ My dear Jimmy,” she answered. “ If you 
ever grow up you will find out how wonderfully 
clever we all are, and how marvellously stupid. 
I’d face death now, but not a blackbeetle.” 

The driver turned round to ask for instruc- 
tions. “ Stop at the next corner,” said Post- 
carrey. 

They walked down the lane to the front of 
The House. Its quiet dignity chilled her for a 
moment, then she drew a deep breath, walked up 
the steps, and rang the bell. 

Mr. Nathaniel Bridgewater’s face was blank 
with dismay when he opened the door. 

“ Is Mr. Falconer at home? ” said Postcarrey. 

“ My lord, my lord! ” said the old man. 

“Where is he?” said Felicity. 

Postcarrey marched to a door on the left, and 
Mr. Bridgewater nodded hopelessly. 

Edmond St. Quin was reading to Pamela 


266 St. Quin 

the ninth essay of his series on the Georgian 
ghosts. 

The air was filled with the scent of violets 
which stood in bowls. The room itself was white 
and gold, with a creamy pink Aubusson carpet, 
satin-wood tables, and several fine pieces of Chi- 
nese Chippendale. 

Edmond looked round, and the paper shook in 
his hand. 

Felicity looked past him to the woman. u I 
should like to speak to this lady, alone,” she said. 

For a moment there was absolute silence. Then 
Edmond rose and came towards his wife. In 
the graceful clothes and white wig he wore he 
looked very handsome. He seemed perfectly 
poised, and quite at home in his knee-breeches 
of blue satin and the great full-skirted coat. 

Before he could speak Felicity said, “ It will 
be best.” 

He bowed, and as he passed her she nearly 
put out her hand to him, for in his face there 
was a look as if something precious had been 
marred and broken. His eyes were unutterably 
sad. 

Postcarrey held open the door, and went out 
after him, closing the door silently. 

“ You live here,” said Felicity. 

The first notes of Pamela’s voice, that deep, 
sweet voice, sounded like music tuned to fit the 
room. 


The Armour of Breeding 267 

“ I have no other home,” she said, her eyes 
fixed on Felicity’s face. 

“ Under my husband’s protection.” 

“He saved my life.” 

Then, timidly, she asked Felicity to sit down. 

“ Thank you,” said Felicity, and seated her- 
self in a Bergere chair. “ The question of the 
morality does not bother me,” she said. “ That 
lies beyond me.” 

The other woman answered quickly. “ It need 
not bother you. There is no question.” 

“ I believe you,” said Felicity. “ Tell me 
about yourself.” 

“ I was at the end of everything,” said Pa- 
mela. “ I had led an awful life, awful, and I 
came to the river as one comes to a friend. He 
saw me in the water, rescued me, and brought me 
here. He does not even know my name.” 

“ What does he call you? ” 

“ He calls me Pamela, because of an idea he 
has that this house was built for some woman, 
and he found a letter in a dress signed with that 
name. My name is Audrey Heron.” 

“ How curious,” said Felicity, “ how very curi- 
ous! Audrey Heron! Your husband was Pat- 
rick Heron. A fine, handsome man.” 

“ I used to think so. He squandered my money 
and took to drink, and then beat me. I thought 
he would kill me.” 

“ Instead,” said Felicity, “ he killed himself.” 


268 


St. Quin 


“ He killed himself? How do you know? 
Tell me quickly.” She had risen, and now stood 
by Felicity, her eyes shone, tears trembled there 
unshed. 

“ It was in all the papers,” said Felicity 
gently. 

The woman turned away, and her whole frame 
shook. 

“ Everybody thought you were dead, so it 
seems, and he thought he had driven you to it. 
He wrote a letter which they found by his side. 
I remember it well. It was very terrible.” 

Then suddenly the woman buried her face in 
her hands and moaned. In an instant Felicity 
put her arms round her. “ What is it? Tell me. 
I’m your friend.” 

“ He killed himself,” she wailed. “ He was so 
cruel. He killed himself. I hated him.” 

“ You are free,” said Felicity. “ Don’t cry 
now. Tears are of no use for the dead; I want 
to hear about my husband.” 

The woman sat down again, and checked her 
tears with an effort. “ He is kind and gentle,” 
she said; “he is the same to all of us, just the 
same to the others as to me.” 

“I wonder why he did this?” said Felicity. 
“ I don’t understand yet. I never guessed this 
side of him could be there. Does he talk? ” 

“ He is teaching me Italian,” she answered, 
“ and he makes me read all sorts of books of the 


The Armour of Breeding 269 

same date, Georgian books, essays, travel, poetry. 
It isn’t like life at all. It all seems a dream.” 

Felicity took up the book nearest to her. It 
was a history of Japan, by Englebertus Kempfer, 
and she smiled. 

“ Does it interest you? ” she asked. 

“ It interests him,” said the woman. 

“ Do you love him? ” said Felicity. 

“ He doesn’t love me,” she answered. “ The 
only one of us he loves is Fifine.” 

“ Fifine ! ” said Felicity sharply. 

“ She’s a baby.” 

Felicity felt a sudden choking pressure on her 
heart, as if a cold hand had touched it. 

“ Is he good? ” she said hesitatingly. “ Is he 
good with children?” 

“ He’s a different man,” said the woman. “ All 
his stiffness goes; he becomes just like a boy. The 
child worships him. In fact, Elizabeth is almost 
jealous.” 

“Her mother?” 

“ Another soul saved from fear like mine,” she 
answered. 

“ He is a strange man,” said Felicity. “ I can’t 
make out whether all this — this, what would you 
call it — atmosphere, is pathetic or humorous. 
Can you? ” 

“ You don’t seem to care,” said the other 
woman. 

“ I wonder if women are expected to be like 


St. Quin 


270 

a farmer’s horse I know,” said Felicity. “ He 
is a farmer on the moors, who gets drunk every 
market day, and generally falls off his horse on 
his way home. The horse understands and 
watches over him always, sometimes all through 
the night. Drink was that man’s hobby, this — 
this oddness is my husband’s; must I stand by 
patient, I wonder? ” 

“ I don’t think you understand him,” said the 
woman. 

“ Do you?” 

“ He tells me he loathes all the daily round of 
a Society life : all the sham and humbug and vul- 
garity.” 

u And he thinks of me as part of it,” said Felic- 
ity, “ so he comes to you.” 

The other woman sat upright suddenly. “ I’ll 
tell you,” she said. “ This, that first of all was 
my greatest comfort, now bores me. It bores me 
unutterably. I can’t be myself, I can’t express 
myself. He treats me as if I was a heroine come 
to life out of a book of poetry, and I’m not. I 
have suffered, and suffered bitterly, and life is 
very real to me. When he saved me I was 
stunned. The evil of one man and his world 
bruised me, so that I had no soul, no heart, no 
desire to live. I came here. I am not clever, 
or really romantic, nor have I a vein of this 
sense of history. At first the wonderful calm of 
the life soothed me, and then it healed me. At 


The Armour of Breeding 271 

first I dreaded going back into the world, and 
now — now I almost long for it. For all the life 
I have had I might as well have been dead. Do 
you understand? I’m clever enough to know 
that my idea of life is a shallow idea. I can’t 
help that.” 

“Yet I never saw anyone who looked so ro- 
mantic,” said Felicity. 

“ That has been my bane. I looked romantic 
and full of poetry as a child. I was brought up 
on fables, and troubadours, ard heavily perfumed 
art and books. My real self was drowned by lit- 
erary drug-taking. So I ran away with a fiend 
— poor soul — and suddenly saw life, his kind of 
life, in all its reality and horror. I have the kind 
of face men think is full of passion, and I am as 
cold as ice. I have a low voice, and men think 
I am full of mystery, and I am quite innocent 
of poetry. This pose was my spoon-food, and it 
has poisoned me. I like fuss and bustle, I be- 
lieve, and the lights of big cities, and the clatter 
of red-and-white restaurants, and funny men at 
music-halls.” 

“ Poor Edmond,” said Felicity. “ We must 
never let him know.” 

Through an open window the sound of whist- 
ling came to them. It was Postcarrey on sentinel 
duty, smoking a cigarette in the garden and try- 
ing his eternal variations of “ What ho ! She 
Bumps.” 


272 St. Quin 

Both Felicity and the woman smiled. 

“ That’s like a breath of fresh air to me,” said 
the woman. 

Then Felicity leaned forward and said ear- 
nestly, “ I want him back. It has been my fault. 

' I didn’t understand. Do you know, I should 
enjoy this odd life every now and again.” 

The other woman looked at Felicity, her smart 
hat, her gown, her little danglements of gold, and 
she shook her head. “ You,” she said, “ are so 
absolutely the modern woman.” 

“ I feel vulgar in this house.” 

“ I don’t think you would ever feel at home.” 

“ I want my husband.” 

“ What are you going to do? ” said the other 
woman. 

“ I came here,” Felicity answered, “ with a defi- 
nite purpose. I was going, as nicely as I could, 
to get my husband away from you. I had no 
idea what kind of woman you were, but I armed 
myself. I even brought a cheque ready signed. 
I hope you understand. I want now, if you won’t 
be offended, to lend you some money.” 

“ So that I can get away,” she said in a low 
voice. 

“ We are all in a false position,” said Felicity. 
“ I long for escape myself. I used to long for 
escape alone, now I want him too. A little free- 
dom, sometimes, is all I want. Perhaps not all. 
I want a companion who understands me. I want, 


The Armour of Breeding 273 

sometimes, to go away from everything, all the 
world of rich people and big houses and smart 
things, and — well, feed pigs, and help in a dairy.” 

“ I should hate it.” 

“ It’s jolly to be browned by the sun and wind, 
and not care. And to do your own hair, and do 
up your own dress. It’s splendid never to wear 
a veil or gloves, and put on thick boots with nails 
in them, and plod along till your legs ache, and 
tear your skirt getting through hedges, and lose 
your way. That’s the best thing, losing one’s 
way. It makes the world seem so big and open. 
My way is so mapped with finger-posts pointing 
to the best hotels and the best houses, and every 
milestone on the road is marked by the addresses 
of people who sell recipes and hints about getting 
stout. I see now that he wanted an escape, and 
chose this.” 

“ And I wanted an escape and tried the river.” 

“ And found yourself tied up once more.” 

“ I’ll take that money,” said the other woman. 
“ I’ll take it because I have none, because I want 
to start again, and because I know it would make 
you happy. I should like to know you ; you help 

^ n 

me. 

“ I want him all to myself for a year.” 

“ Give me just a little,” said the woman. w I 
may have the wreck of a fortune somewhere, and 
I can find out.” 

“ What will you do? ” said Felicity. 


274 


St. Quin 


“ There was another man once,” she answered, 
“ who loved me. He said he would wait all his 
life for me. He is one of those kind of dog-men, 
rather like your farmer’s horse, who would wait. 
And having waited he’d be kind. I am going to 
him.” 

“ Does he like the things you like? ” 

“ He is one of those kind dog-men,” she said, 
“ who follow, women from folly to folly without 
complaining, until they wear them out by sheer 
weight of love. I don’t love him now, that sort 
of love is all over for me, but I can be good and 
true to him, and give him all he wants. And in 
time ! ” 

“Is there pen and ink in the house?” said 
Felicity. 

“ Oh, yes,” she said, smiling, “ there’s a writ- 
ing set over here that belonged to Hogarth, or 
Swift, or somebody.” 

“ Five hundred pounds,” said Felicity, blotting 
the cheque. 

The other woman flushed. “ I don’t like tak- 
ing it. It seems so sordid.” 

“ Nonsense,” said Felicity briskly. “ This isn’t 
a price, it’s our offering on the altar of freedom. 
I love your dress.” 

“ I love yours,” she answered. 

“ Shall we ring a bell? ” said Felicity. “ Isn’t 
it difficult to end things like this? ” 

“ Am I to tejl him? ” 


The Armour of Breeding 275 

“ No. Please, no. Just leave it and go, if you 
can, to-morrow. I shall tell him at the right 
time.” 

“ Go, without a word of thanks? ” 

“ Don’t you think explanations are rather a 
bore? ” 

“ He saved my life.” 

“ Save his self-esteem. It is nearly as impor- 
tant.” 

“ He has given me everything.” 

“ Give him more. Let him think that you have 
failed him, and not that he has failed you.” 

“ Is it quite fair? ” 

“ My dear,” said Felicity, taking her hand, 
“ when women take things in hand they have to 
be very careful, or men would see them smiling 
as they tucked them up in bed. I am going to 
take him away now, and he will think he is tak- 
ing me away. He will nurse a grievance, I ex- 
pect, until he forgets to. I hope so. You see, 
for me, who have never been in love before, it 
is rather exciting. Will you tell me, really and 
truly, what you will do with your first evening? ” 

“ To-morrow night,” she answered, “ I shall 
go to a restaurant, not too smart, where there 
is a band. And then I shall go to a music-hall, 
and back to a quiet hotel. Does it sound very 
vulgar? ” 

“ I wish I could come with you. Do you know 
what I must do ? I have a dinner-party of twenty- 


St. Quin 


276 

five. I shall see the last act of a play I don’t like 
and have seen four times; and then go to a po- 
litical reception.” 

“ And you don’t enjoy it? ” 

“ I like looking nice, that’s all.” 

“And he?” 

“ He likes talking to old dowagers. Now I 
think we’d better ring the bell.” 

Mr. Bridgewater answered the door. 

“ Will you say I am ready? ” 

Edmond appeared almost directly, dressed now 
in a brown suit. 

“ We’ve had a talk,” said Felicity cheerfully. 
“ And I think this room is beautiful. Shall we 
walk to a cab? I want you to take me home.” 

He hesitated, looking at the two women. “ Fe- 
licity,” he said, “ I must know.” 

“ I’ll tell you all about it on the way home. Au 
revoir,” she said, holding out her hand. “ I envy 
you the garden.” 

Edmond was about to speak, but she put a hand 
on his arm and stopped him. “ Not now,” she 
said. 

“ Do you understand at all? ” he said hoarsely. 

“ Perfectly. Don’t worry.” 

Postcarrey was by the door. 

“ I won’t bother you any more,” said Felicity, 
giving him her hand. “ It was awfully kind of 
you to come. I shall be in to-morrow afternoon.” 

Postcarrey shook Edmond’s hand with a big 


The Armour of Breeding 277 

grip. “ Lunch with me, old chap,” he said. “ To- 
morrow? Any day? ” 

And when they had gone the other woman ran 
upstairs and began to put on her old clothes that 
had still been kept, and she said over and over 
again, “ I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE AMATEUR DOCTOR 

It is a far cry from the painted Medicine Man 
of the Indians, with his uncomfortable charms, 
to the fashionable doctor of Harley Street still 
with charms, but now more sedately put. One 
can see the human mind stretched to its utmost 
capacity for faith in both cases. Notice, if you 
like, the great lady driving up with her respectful 
footman and chauffeur; see how she is assisted 
tenderly to the pavement, just a glimpse of per- 
fectly shod feet, silk stocking, and a hint of petti- 
coat. A dog, yapping viciously, is begged to re- 
main in the carriage, from whence he surveys 
passers by from the depths of a fur rug. 

She enters the consulting-room; she tells her 
ills. A quiet, grave man, unnoticeably dressed, 
listens with rapt attention. Certainly Madame 
has nerves. She is to get this prescription made 
up. She is to go to — well, where does she pre- 
fer? — Homburg, Marienbad, Aix-les-Bains, or 
perhaps Trouville or some French watering-place. 
Her husband will be playing golf. Certainly it 
will do Madame good to be away from him. 
278 


The Amateur Doctor 279 

Does she care for bathing? Ah, she does, then 
let her bathe. White wine? Splendid, no better 
cure. Of course, one understands that at the end 
of the season one gets a little — exactly. Three 
guineas. Good day. Madame is driven away to 
the Savoy to a lunch-party, where she eats mag- 
nificently and with perfect digestion. 

The St. Quins have been to Ascot, Henley, and 
Cowes, and goodness knows what else. They 
have been, as people say, seen everywhere. On 
the brilliant mornings London gives, they were 
to be found beautifully mounted in the Park, nod- 
ding to hundreds of acquaintances. Head waiters 
at great restaurants bowed low before them. 
Country houses saw them arrive on Saturday and 
depart on Monday. They danced and they dined, 
they punted on the river, and they motored down 
to friends. 

Mr. Bridgewater knew them not, nor Marie 
Louise, nor Elizabeth and her baby. The old 
House in Chiswick held no ghosts, and only the 
servants sunned themselves comfortably in the 
garden. 

Walking up and down in the boudoir Edmond 
had explained himself. He did it in bad grace, 
leaving out all the essentials. He made no men- 
tion of the disease at the back of it all, that glow- 
ing, pulsating disease of Romance. He explained 
the matter as a sudden temptation, grown out of 
much reading, to reconstruct the past. How it 


280 


St. Quin 


was done he told without humour and without 
exaggeration. He made no mention of Mariette, 
or of old Serge, or his five years’ wandering. He 
made no excuse. And when he had finished he 
looked to hear reproaches, and none came, came 
only acceptance. But for all that Felicity was 
filled with suppressed laughter. “Well,” she 
thought, “ he shall learn the value of his own 
poetry.” 

The House was to be retained, and the servants. 
“ They,” she argued, “ are our pensioners. It *s 
not fair to thrust them back upon the world.” 

He learned from her that the woman had gone 
of her own free will, and he burst out on this 
saying : 

“ She had no money. That is cruel.” 

“ I have attended to that,” said Felicity. 

“ She has no friends.” 

“ She is going to old friends,” said his wife. 

“ I must see her,” he cried. 

u Teddy,” she remonstrated, “ don’t you see 
that is impossible? I am keeping in touch with 
her. I understand her, and she is safe.” 

“ Well,” he cried hopelessly, “ I have told you 
everything. What do you say? ” 

She fingered a little gold paper-knife by her, 
and, for an instant, a smile flitted across her face. 
It was because a harlequin humour whispered to 
her to say: “ Come to mother.” But she said, 
glancing up at him : “ I think it is my turn 


The Amateur Doctor 281 

now. Try my life to the full, and see if you care 
for it.” 

“ I loathe it,” he answered. 

“ It’s only fair to me,” she said. “ I do so 
much alone, and people talk. No woman likes 
to appear so unattractive that she cannot some- 
times keep her husband by her side. It lessens 
her value in the eyes of other men. And women,” 
she added. 

“ Why do you want to appear attractive to 
other men? ” he asked gently. 

“ My dear Teddy, what a question to ask a 
woman.” 

“ But a man’s wife is his wife.” 

“ A woman’s charm is her profession, her art, 
if you like. The only one gift we have, except 
the one of being mothers.” 

“Aren’t we drifting from the subject?” he 
said. “ You don’t know me. I am not like other 
men. This buffoonery of dressing and undress- 
ing, this carpet knighthood disgusts me. Do you 
want me to hang about you like a tailor’s dummy, 
quacking when the flock quacks, hee-hawing when 
they hee-haw? ” 

“ You love adventure,” she said. “ There is 
plenty to be found in our Set.” 

“ The adventure,” he cried, “ of faithless wives, 
of lady-killers, of stupid extravagance, and shame- 
less intrigues. The morals of chorus-girls, and 
the manners of hogs. And a few decent men and 


282 


St. Quin 


women struggling to assume'vices they don’t pos- 
sess. I chose a quiet life.” 

“ You might remember you also chose me. 
Have you ever loved me, Teddy? ” 

The abrupt question made him start. “ It is 
my greatest blunder,” he answered gravely, “ that 
I have not.” 

“ You trust a lonely woman among your hogs 
and chorus-girls. You do not ask her to keep 
herself clean from them, but you say to her: 1 Go 
your way. It is your life.’ Sometimes I have 
been very lonely.” 

His mood melted. He spoke at once affec- 
tionately. “ My dear,” he said, “ this is a ter- 
ribly lonely world. I suppose we put excitements 
round us for a barricade. But when our souls 
speak *we tremble for our loneliness, and look for 
a helping hand; we find nothing, nothing, nothing 
but an awful darkness. I’ll come with you into 
your world and try your opiate, for mine you 
have taken away from me.” 

“ If one loved? ” she said. 

He turned his back to her, and shrugged his 
shoulders. “ Love,” he said, “ if we could find 
it, would wrap us round in a golden mist. But 
Love is a coy bird.” 

“ Yet you love people,” she said. 

He turned to her again. “ People who are 
broken, or hurt, or sorry. Yes. What is giving 
but receiving a .hundredfold? ” 


4 


The Amateur Doctor 283 

They grew into a strange intimacy in those 
months. She found him a man of quaint knowl- 
edge, of odd turns of conversation. He told her, 
as he might have told a stranger, of the queer 
people he knew and the curious places he had vis- 
ited. Unconsciously, while weaving the magic 
web of London Romance, he sought her help and 
interest. 

One night they were returning late; indeed, the 
first flush of a summer morning was in the sky, 
and he asked her if she would like to walk the 
last hundred yards home. She thought ruefully 
of her dress and her tired feet, but consented, and 
he stopped the car and sent it away. They turned 
into The Belvedere, and all the birds were sing- 
ing. On the steps of one of the big houses a 
woman was seated by a big basket tying lavender 
in little penny bunches. Edmond touched his 
wife’s arm, and called on her to stay and look. 
Out of the house next to their own came the Duke 
of Nonsuch. He walked quickly along the street 
to the woman. They saw him buy a bunch of 
lavender, and saw the woman spit on his coin be- 
fore she put it away. Then they saw the old man 
gravely lift his hat to her and go on his way 
smelling at his bunch of sweet-smelling herbs. 

“ A fine man,” said Edmond. 

“ Buy me a bunch,” said Felicity. 

He crossed the street, and held up a sovereign 
to the lavender woman. She took up a bunch, 


284 St. Quin 

and, walking away from him, came across to Fe- 
licity. “ I’ll give it yer for luck,” sh.e said in her 
hoarse, beery voice. “ I ain’t seed such a beauty 
not in all my born days. Wish us luck, my dear.” 

“ Indeed, I do,” said Felicity, smiling. 

“ What beautiful babies you’ll have, my dear,” 
said the old hag. 

Felicity blushed, and smiled again. 

It seemed the old woman wanted to talk. She 
waved Edmond’s sovereign aside. 

“ He give me one,” she said, jerking her head 
in the direction the Duke had taken. “ He has 
done every year. I knew him when him and me 
was young. All on the straight, mind you.” 

“ You must have seen some odd things,” said 
Edmond. 

She winked her watery eye at him. “ Lord,” 
she said, “ when I come to write my life, won’t 
it make a splash. London ! ” she threw up her 
dirty hands. “ I tell you, it fairly hums with life. 
Straight it does. What price me and the Duke 
and a few friends drinking champagne and eat- 
ing fried eggs at four o’clock in the morning? I 
used to be at the ‘ Alhambra,’ and as pretty as a 
picture.” She caught a look on Felicity’s face. 
“ Drink, my dear; a drop of old gin, that’s what 
done it. That and trouble. I had a boy, a fair 
swine. He hopped it with my savings, bless his 
blooming heart, and he saw the inside of the stone 
jug — fifteen years he got.” 


The Amateur Doctor 


285 


41 Is he out yet? ” asked Felicity. 

44 Out, and under the turf, my dear. Blimey, 
ain’t it a lovely morning. Don’t it remind you of 
the country? ” 

44 It smells fresh and sweet,” said Edmond. 

44 You’re right there,” she answered. “ I 
walked in yesterday, thirsty work. Funny world, 
ain’t it? ” she said, addressing Felicity. “ Me and 
you. I ain’t got on my diamonds this morning. 
I had one once in a ring give me by a real gentle- 
man. ‘ Rosalie,’ he said, * you ain’t as rotten as 
you look,’ and he give me a ring. My father, 
drunken old beast, he was a jockey — -Wad San- 
ders; ever hear of him? ” 

“ I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Edmond. 

“Before your time; ask him, ask the Duke. 
He won him a bit.” 

Felicity drew her wrap closer round her. 

“Well, good morning, and good luck to you,” 
said the old hag. “ You’ve got a bit of all right 
there, young man.” 

She waddled off 'across the road as they walked 
on. 

The end of the Season was approaching, and 
Edmond, to his own amazement, found himself 
regretting it, found himself at the same time with 
a longing to see The House in Chiswick again. 
Felicity felt she had almost cured his disease. A 
severe dose of Society, she had schemed, to be 


286 


St. Quin 


followed by the isolation of the cottage on the 
moors. There, if ever, he might learn to love 
her. 

When a woman sets herself a task such as this 
she has no shame in using every gun in her bat- 
tery. She set herself deliberately to flirt with her 
husband, to lay herself out for his moods, to use 
now a soft pressure of her hand, now a covert 
glance from her eyes. She surprised him with her 
clothes and with her deshabille, with her sudden 
warm looks and cold retreats. 

Then, one day, when she was feeling secure, 
she talked to him of The House and of the 
woman. 

“ Do I think of her? ” he asked in answer to 
her question. “ Almost as a ghost, as I first 
thought of the ghost of the house. I wonder 
what manner of woman she really was; where she 
is. I look for her face in the street, in the theatre, 
everywhere. Tell me, have you ever heard of 
her? ” 

“ She is married,” said Felicity, regarding him 
closely. 

He got up and walked about silent for some 
time. “ Yes,” he said. “ I knew she was mar- 
ried.” 

“ But a second time,” she said. “ Her first 
husband shot himself- She married a week 
ago.” 

He was silent for some time, and then he sud- 


The Amateur Doctor 287 

denly burst into peals of laughter. “ A set of 
dessert knives would be a prosaic end to a ro- 
mance, wouldn’t it? ” he said. 

And then she knew he was cured. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


THE CONFOUNDING OF MR. 

BRIDGEWATER 

In the difficult mazes of a difficult situation Lord 
Postcarrey walked with circumspection. His very 
straight, direct mind and natural honesty had 
chosen the path that arrived at the heart of the 
maze. In few words he had brought Edmond 
St. Quin to his senses, and sent him away with 
new respect for his wife. “Don’t be an ass; 
she’s simply cracked about you.” 

Then again, he had lunched with Felicity and 
had heard the truth from her. She knew that Ed- 
mond loved her. But she knew also that only 
some accident could bring them together. 

“ One does not,” she said, “ have an emotional 
crisis over the breakfast-table.” 

One way or another the affair was over, or 
nearly over, and merely waiting for the real mo- 
ment for expression. Postcarrey had done his part 
of the job, and was out of it. And now that he 
was out of it he knew he had been falling in love 
with Felicity himself. The thought struck him 
as he was walking down St. James’s Street to- 
288 


Confounding of Mr. Bridgewater 289 

wards the Palace. Then, in his direct manner, he 
retraced his steps and began to walk home. 

London is full of men heart-sick for the wilds 
they have known. One sees them, bronzed, up- 
right, punctiliously dressed, walking the pave- 
ments with eyes gazing far away. One hears 
them speak of Africa, the pathless jungle, of 
blackwater fever, scorching suns, and the sound 
of native music. One hears them tell of long 
nights on the great Chinese desert, of starvation 
in Alaska, or of the solitudes of Arctic regions. 
By nature they are pioneers, outposts of Empire, 
marking-stones pointing always onward. And cir- 
cumstances have led them home, where they sit 
in clubs and grow old wondering where they will 
see, if ever, their wonderful land again. 

Who has known a tent under the stars with 
vast solitudes about it, who has felt the hot breath 
of jungle nights, the grim, gaunt glory of great 
ice-fields, can never be the same again. There, 
looking out of a club window, is General Sir Wil- 
son Margreaves who saw — how many years ago ! 
— five villages wiped out by sword and shot in a 
day and a night. See how nice he is about his but- 
tered toast. 

Postcarrey walked homewards with his mind 
made up, and as he turned the corner of Berkeley 
Street, who should come to meet him but Arthur 
Tellaway, limping a little still from the wound 
his last tiger gave him. They had met last in a 


290 


St. Quin 


mining camp in Dutch Guiana. And they said 
simultaneously, 44 Hallo ! What are you doing 
here?” 

Seeing what they had seen together the ques- 
tion was the basis of their inner thoughts. Each 
man was wondering what, indeed, he was doing 
there. They, who had known the Great Silence, 
stood where fussy taxicabs shot by them, and 
pale-faced youths ambled on the pavement, and 
whiffs of delicate scent hailed the passage of 
a lady. 

“ Come and lunch with me,” said Postcarrey. 

“ You look pretty prosperous, old chap,” said 
Tellaway. 

“ Rotten,” said Postcarrey, laughing. u I. sim- 
ply roll in money. I’ll tell you all about it. I 
live just round the corner.” 

44 Rather different to the hut up river,” said 
Tellaway. “ By Jingo, I shall never forget see- 
ing you run like a hare stark naked out of your 
bath.” 

“ When the white ants came.” 

44 And ate jolly nearly all our food.” 

“ I say,” said Postcarrey; 44 are you game for 
a trip to British Columbia? ” 

44 When? ” said Tellaway. 

44 Say next Monday.” 

44 Pm fed up with this,” Tellaway answered. 
44 But Pm supposed to be shooting with a chap 
next week.” 


Confounding of Mr. Bridgewater 291 

“ Chuck it,” said Postcarrey, just as they 
reached his house. “ Here we are. This is me. 
Don’t trip over the servants.” 

They both laughed at the memory. Tellaway 
had once fallen over a Chinaman who had gone 
to sleep at his tent-door. 

While they were lunching great matters were 
abroad. Early that morning some stray god had 
peered in at Felicity asleep, and had whispered a 
jest in her ear. She woke up smiling, and found 
the early morning sun in the room. 

When she had told Postcarrey that one did not 
have an emotional crisis at the breakfast-table she 
was wrong. The gods like odd harlequinade back- 
grounds for their games. Eggs and bacon and 
coffee have a scent sometimes as romantic as wild 
thyme and twisted eglantine. 

Felicity delicately removed the bones of a sole, 
and said, almost too carelessly, “ Teddy, I think 
you ought to go and see how your Georgians are 
getting on.” 

He looked up from his eggs and bacon. “ I’ve 
been thinking about it,” he answered. 

“ Go to-day, lunch there,” she said. “ I’ve got 
something to do at home. And Teddy,” she said, 
“ do it properly. Put on the clothes. They like 
it, I think.” 

He examined her face to see if she wasn’t 
laughing at him, but found her perfectly grave. 

“ I know you think I’m mad,” he answered, “ or 


292 


St. Quin 


perhaps childish, but I think I will. I rather han- 
ker for the old place again.” 

“ Would you mind calling for my watch at Bo- 
ley’s? It will be ready at half-past twelve.” 

“ I will certainly do it,” he answered. 

And so he walked straight into the trap. 

No sooner had he left the house than Felicity 
ordered her car. The direction she gave was to 
a certain lane in Chiswick. 

At twelve o’clock Mr. Bridgewater opened the 
door to a radiant lady, who conquered him by her 
smiles. 

“ Mr. Bridgewater,” she said, “ can you keep a 
secret? ” 

“ Better than I can keep anything,” he an- 
swered. 

“ Then when Mr. St. Quin comes you are not 
to tell him I am here.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Bridgewater, 
“ Mr. Falconer is the master of this house.” 

“ Mr. St. Quin is Mr. Falconer,” she an- 
swered. 

“ You don’t say so! ” he cried, amazed. 

“ And I am Mrs. St. Quin.” 

“ You don’t say so ! ” 

“ And, Mr. Bridgewater, ask Elizabeth to 
come here, please.” 

He went in a great state of mind into the ser- 
vants’ hall. 

“ Elizabeth,” he said, “ here’s a state of things. 


Confounding of Mr. Bridgewater 293 

Here’s the master’s wife come, and she’s asking 
for you. Oh, dear me, my girl, is this the end 
of us? ” 

He sat down, quite collapsed, until Marie 
Louise found him and comforted him with a glass 
of beer. 

Meanwhile Elizabeth found Felicity. 

“ I want you to show me upstairs,” said Fe- 
licity. 

In no time Elizabeth was captured, and while 
Felicity was undressing she told her all the story 
of her coming to The House, and nearly all the 
clever sayings of Fifine. 

Why was she undressing? What had the stray 
god who came in with the morning sunlight whis- 
pered? 

The big cupboards were open, and dress after 
dress was looked at. 

“ I can’t get that on, or that,” Felicity was say- 
ing. “ I don’t care for the dark one. Look at 
this, Elizabeth. Can I get into it? ” 

It appeared she could. It appeared that some 
lady of the past had been of the same gorgeous 
figure, the same fine bust and splendid length of 
limb. 

She put it on. Elizabeth did it up at the back. 
Elizabeth dressed her hair with strayed curls 
from under a blue ribbon. But Elizabeth did not 
understand. 

They heard a key turn in the front door, and 


294 St. Quin 

Felicity’s heart stood still. What if the god had 
been a false god? 

They heard St. Quin pass the door and go to 
his own room. 

The situation did not embarrass Marie Louise. 
She left curiosity for afterwards, and became sim- 
ply plunged in cooking. It was evidently an affair 
of some importance. Very well, then, the lunch 
must be of the best. The kitchen smelt of chopped 
herbs. The salad was drying in a cloth. The 
eyes of the fire burnt bright. 

Edmond came down to the dining-room. He 
had summoned Mr. Bridgewater, when he ar- 
rived, and had asked for lunch. 

Mr. Bridgewater played the part of the dis- 
creet family butler to perfection. He took the 
order for lunch for one with a bow, and trans- 
lated it into lunch for two to Marie Louise. “Un 
tres special lunch, doo persons, toute suite” 

Edmond sat down as Mr. Bridgewater, quiver- 
ing like a jelly, announced luncheon. 

“What’s the matter, Mr. Bridgewater?” he 
asked, unfolding his table napkin. And then he 
saw that the table was laid for two. 

“ No, no,” he said gently. “ I understand the 
mistake. Please ” 

“ There is no mistake,” said Felicity, from the 
door. 

Edmond sprang out of his chair. She stood 
there smiling, blushing, a wonderful picture, look- 


Confounding of Mr. Bridgewater 295 

ing more beautiful than ever, more beautiful than 
any slim eighteenth-century ghost of his dreams. 
They had been dreams, but she was real. 

Mr. Bridgewater withdrew silently. 

“ Teddy,’’ she said, and her eyes suddenly filled 
with tears. 

She was in his arms, his lips to hers. 

“ My darling,” he said, “ I’ve been a blind 
fool.” 

His face was white, as hers was lifted up to 
him. “ Teddy,” she whispered, “ do you love 
me now? ” 

They ate the precious omelette cold, and drank 
claret out of sherry glasses. They ate ragout 
scalding, and forgot to touch the little fruit tart- 
lets. 

And when, in the ecstasy of the meeting, they 
sat at last in the garden, hand-in-hand, he said, 
his eyes feasting on her face, “ Darling, I want 
so much to tell you about a little French girl I 
met in Italy.” 

And she answered, smiling into his eyes, “Oh, 
Teddy, I’m so glad you’ve got a story like that, 
too.” 

And Mr. Bridgewater, drinking his glass of 
port downstairs, prayed that the new play might 
have a lifelong run. 


THE END 






















































































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